5153 1 en PDF

05
16
TI-13-04-001-EN-C
The contributions cover structural aspects such as the three main

types of VET system in Europe, the differences between
apprenticeship systems in England and in Germany, the
development of schools for technical and vocational education in
France, a comparison between VET in the Netherlands and in
Germany and the dynamics of VET in Switzerland. This volume
also features specific historical instances such as the
apprenticeship strikes in British metalworking, the production
school concept, Lehrgangsausbildung or the sequential method,
a systematic industry-based training method, the link between
continuing education and VET in Finland and the development of
VET in Russia.
04
This volume gathers the contributions of the first day of the First
international conference on the history of VET in Europe in a
comparative perspective, held in Florence 11-12 October 2002.
The overall theme of the conference was the different ways in
which European VET has developed over the years and how this
development is linked to various approaches to social policy.
Towards a history of vocational

education and training (VET)
in Europe in a comparative perspective
Proceedings of the first international conference
October 2002, Florence
Volume I

European Centre for the
Development of Vocational Training

Volume I
Europe 123, GR-570 01 Thessaloniki (Pylea)

Postal address: PO Box 22427, GR-551 02 Thessaloniki
Tel. (30) 23 10 49 01 11, Fax (30) 23 10 49 00 20
E-mail: info@cedefop.eu.int
Homepage: www.cedefop.eu.int
Interactive website: www.trainingvillage.gr
Free of charge On request from Cedefop
5153 EN
ISBN 92-896-0314-3
EN
Towards a history of vocational education

and training (VET) in Europe in a
comparative perspective
Volume I
The rise of national VET systems in a comparative perspective
Cedefop Panorama series; 103

Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004
A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet.
It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu.int).
Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.
ISBN 92-896-0314-3
ISSN 1562-6180
European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, 2004
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
Printed in Belgium
The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) is the European
Union's reference centre for vocational education and training. We provide information on and
analyses of vocational education and training systems, policies, research and practice.
Cedefop was established in 1975 by Council Regulation (EEC) No 337/75.
Europe 123
GR-57001 Thessaloniki (Pylea)
Postal Address:
PO Box 22427
GR-55102 Thessaloniki
Tel. (30) 23 10 49 01 11
Fax (30) 23 10 49 00 20
Edited by:
Cedefop
Prof Dr Wolf-Dietrich Greinert
Dr Georg Hanf
BIBB
Project team in Cedefop:

Mette Beyer Paulsen, Gundula Bock, Annette Cloake, ric Fries Guggenheim, Anders Nilsson,
Sten Pettersson, Marc Willem, Norbert Wollschlger, Marena Zoppi
Published under the responsibility of:

Johan van Rens, Director
Stavros Stavrou, Deputy Director
Preface
There are few long-term studies in which the development of vocational education and
training (VET) is placed in a larger societal framework. Those that do exist tend to focus on
the development in only one country. Consequently, there is limited understanding of why
VET has evolved differently in countries with similar economic and social development. In
Western Europe the emergence of EC/EU social policies has had further consequences for
VET in Member States, while, at the same time, existing education and training systems have
presumably influenced the shaping of EC/EU policies.
In January 2000, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop)
launched the project A European history of vocational education and training. The project is
based on the understanding that knowledge of historical development is necessary for a solid
comprehension and interpretation of contemporary events and processes. The purpose of the
project is to promote better understanding of present-day VET by making reference to the
historical development at national and intra-national levels. The project also sheds light on the
influence of VET on European integration, and aims to encourage future research in these
areas.
In October 2002 the University of Florence and the European University Institute organised,
under the aegis of Cedefop, the first international conference on the History of vocational
education and training in Europe in a comparative perspective. The first session of that
conference dealt with the development of VET systems in one or several European countries.
The second session examined the role of VET in EC/EU social policy was mainly from a
historical viewpoint.
This publication provides the conference proceedings in two volumes. It also includes papers
which, for time reasons, were not presented at the conference. The articles form the basis of a
valuable body of knowledge which Cedefop hopes to build on in the future by encouraging
further comparative research into the history of VET in Europe, including other countries to
complete the picture.
Stavros Stavrou
Deputy Director
Table of contents
Preface ........................................................................................................................................ 1
Table of contents ........................................................................................................................ 3
List of figures ............................................................................................................................. 7
Executive summary .................................................................................................................... 9
1.
Georg Hanf: Introduction .................................................................................................. 11

References......................................................................................................................... 16
2.
Wolf-Dietrich Greinert: European vocational training systems: the theoretical

context of historical development .................................................................................... 17
2.1.
What makes VET a system? ................................................................................ 17
2.2.
Three work cultures................................................................................................ 19
2.3.
Three vocational training regimes .......................................................................... 20
2.4.
Three concepts legitimising three learning orientations......................................... 23
2.5.
Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 26
References......................................................................................................................... 27
3.
Thomas Deissinger: Apprenticeship systems in England and Germany: decline and

survival ............................................................................................................................ 28
3.1.
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 28
3.2.
Structural differences between German and English apprenticeship ..................... 29
3.3.
The end of the old occupational structure during the Industrial Revolution .......... 33
3.4.
Liberalism and the tardy social State...................................................................... 34
3.5.
The adaptation crisis in the second half of the 19th century .................................. 36
3.6.
Company vocational training at the dawn of the 20th century............................... 37
3.7.
English further education schools at the dawn of the 20th century........................ 38
3.8.
Closing remarks...................................................................................................... 39
References......................................................................................................................... 40
4.
Paul Ryan: Apprentice strikes in British metalworking, 1919-69: attributes and

interpretation .................................................................................................................... 46
4.1.
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 46
4.2.
Patterns ................................................................................................................... 47
4.3.
Context, attributes and strike demands .................................................................. 48

4.3.1.
Context ...................................................................................................... 49
4.3.2.
Attributes................................................................................................... 50
4.3.3.
Strike demands .......................................................................................... 51

3
4.4.
4.5.
Interpretation .......................................................................................................... 52
4.4.1.
Economics of bargaining and training ...................................................... 52
4.4.2.
Apprentice traditions................................................................................. 53
4.4.3.
Training attributes ..................................................................................... 54
4.4.4.
Effects on and reactions of employers ...................................................... 55
4.4.5.
Effects on pay structure............................................................................. 58
Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 58
Annex: data sources .......................................................................................................... 60

References......................................................................................................................... 62
5.
Vincent Troger: Vocational training in French schools: the fragile State-employer

alliance .............................................................................................................................. 66
5.1.
Technical and vocational education from the French Revolution to the Fifth
Republic ................................................................................................................. 66
5.2.
The devaluation of technical and vocational education ......................................... 70
5.3.
Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 73
References......................................................................................................................... 73
6.
Dietmar Frommberger, Holger Reinisch: Development of disparate structures

of Dutch and German vocational education ..................................................................... 75
6.1.
Historical development of VET in the Netherlands ............................................... 75
6.2.
Historical development of VET in Germany.......................................................... 80
6.3.
Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 84
References......................................................................................................................... 84
7.
Philipp Gonon: The dynamics of vocational training innovation in Switzerland ............ 88

7.1.
Vocational training as a system .............................................................................. 88

7.1.1.
7.2.
Educational reform through improvement ............................................................. 90

7.2.1.
7.3.
7.4.
Vocational training as a subsystem of education ...................................... 89

Federalism and particularity as drivers for reform .................................... 91
Early vocational training in Switzerland ................................................................ 92

7.3.1.
The third learning environment: the synthesis of learning and work........ 93
7.3.2.
Working at school: Pestalozzi, Fellenberg and others .............................. 93
7.3.3.
The workplace as school: Schppi, Bendel, etc. ....................................... 94
7.3.4.
Pluralisation of vocational training ........................................................... 96
Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 97
References......................................................................................................................... 98
8.
Anja Heikkinen: Can European policy draw on models of vocational education?........ 100
8.1.
The influence of the history of vocational education and training on policy ....... 100
8.2.
Continuing education in Finland .......................................................................... 102
8.3.
Continuing education in Nordic countries and Germany ..................................... 105
8.4.
Continuing education and models of VET ........................................................... 109
8.5.
Political implications............................................................................................ 112
Annex 1........................................................................................................................... 115

References....................................................................................................................... 117
9.
Johannes Meyser: The production school concept as Europes first didactically

guided vocational training model ................................................................................... 122
9.1.
The production school concept and modernisation.............................................. 122
9.2.
The coles dArts et Mtiers in France ................................................................ 123

9.2.1.
Phase I (1780 to 1803): vanguard of vocational training according

to the production school principle........................................................... 123
9.2.2.
Phase II (1803 to 1815): rise of the coles dArts et Mtiers ................. 123
9.2.3.
Phase III (1815 to 1850): consolidation of the coles dArts et

Mtiers .................................................................................................... 124
9.3.
A new European vocational training concept....................................................... 124
9.4.
Contextual origins of the production school concept in France ........................... 125
9.5.
9.4.1.
Late development of French industrialisation......................................... 125
9.4.2.
Deposition of the guilds .......................................................................... 126
9.4.3.
Technical and scientific progress ............................................................ 126
9.4.4.
The philanthropic movement .................................................................. 126
9.4.5.
Personal influence of La Rochefoucauld ................................................ 127
Objectives and realisation of the production school concept in Europe

during the 19th century......................................................................................... 128
9.5.1.
Production schools as crisis anticipation ................................................ 128
9.5.2.
Production schools and the reform of craft-trade training ...................... 128
9.5.3.
Production schools and elite training ...................................................... 129
9.6.
Production schools and power hierarchies in Europe........................................... 129
9.7.
Production schools and instructional workshop method...................................... 130
9.8.
The spread of production schools in the 19th century.......................................... 130
9.9.
Decline and revival of the production school principle in the 20th century......... 132
9.9.1.
Decline .................................................................................................... 132
9.9.2.
Revival .................................................................................................... 133
Annex 1........................................................................................................................... 134

References....................................................................................................................... 135
5
10. *QWHU:LHPDQQLehrgangsausbildung: a European prototype of a universal

LQGXVWU\EDVHGWUDLQLQJmethod ................................................................................... 137
10.1. The rise of industry specific training.................................................................... 138
10.2. What a skilled worker has to learn ....................................................................... 139
10.3. Russian origins ..................................................................................................... 142
10.4. Transfer in Germany and in Europe ..................................................................... 149
10.5. Key fossils ............................................................................................................ 151
10.6. Concluding remarks ............................................................................................. 154
Notes ............................................................................................................................ 156
References....................................................................................................................... 156
11. ,ULQD6WDQLVODZRZQD'HULYLDQNRThree hundred years of vocational education
LQ5XVVLD..................................................................................................................... 158
Reference ........................................................................................................................ 163
12. Authors details............................................................................................................... 165
13. List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................... 169
List of figures
Figure 4.1:
Youth shares of strike activity, principal disputes only, UK engineering

and shipbuilding, 1919-69 (%) ....................................................................... 58
Figure 4.2:
Attributes of apprentice strike movements, UK, 1919-69 .............................. 59
Figure 4.3:
Apprentice age-wage scale rates, UK engineering (EEF), 1935-71 ............... 60
Figure 8.1:
Students in apprenticeship training (1875-80: certificates) compared to

school-based VET in all branches ................................................................ 113
Figure 8.2:
Schools and students in school-based VET from the 1840s until the
1910s (registered, supported)........................................................................ 114
Figure 8.3:
Transformation of Finnish continuing education/school .............................. 115
Figure 9.1:
The cole de Mtiers in La Rochefoucaulds duchy .................................... 132
Figure 9.2:
The founder of the coles dArts et Mtiers: Duke FranoisAlexandre Frderic de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827)............... 132
Figure 9.3:
The Liancourt coat of arms with the emblem of the coles dArts et
Mtiers. ......................................................................................................... 132
Figure 9.4:
Pupils working in the smithy at the cole dArts et Mtiers in Chlonssur-Marne, 1850............................................................................................ 133
Figure 9.5:
Portal decoration at the cole Nationale dArts et Mtiers in Paris. Art

and commerce meet. ..................................................................................... 133
Figure 10.1:
Conception of the practical knowledge a skilled worker typically

requires to solve a complex task ................................................................... 137
Figure 10.2:
Basic course in metals (Deutscher Ausschuss fr Technisches

Schulwesen, German Committee for Technical Education, 1936)............... 139
Figure 10.3:
Victor Karlowich Della-Vos (1829-1890) ................................................... 140
Figure 10.4:
Wood-turning course .................................................................................... 141
Figure 10.5:
Turning Course ............................................................................................. 141
Figure 10.6:
Foundation metal course (Italy, 1900) .......................................................... 143
Figure 10.7:
P. N. Subenko: Working diagram of assembly and clamping tools

(Moscow Technical University 1991) .......................................................... 144
Figure 10.8:
Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Swenden

1902 .............................................................................................................. 144
Figure 10.9:
Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Finland

1958 .............................................................................................................. 145
Figure 10.10:
Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Israel 1987..... 145
Figure 10.11:
Institute for Research on Qualification and Training of the Austrian

Employers Association (IBW), Vienna 1985 ............................................... 146
Figure 10.12:
Transfer of the Russian system to western Europe: metalworking

training courses analysed to date .................................................................. 148
Figure 10.13:
Original, typical key didactic fossils in metalworking courses .................. 149
Figure 10.14:
Key didactic fossil; statistics ...................................................................... 150
Figure 10.15:
Didactic Key Fossil example: V-block (London 1966), milling course,

training with machine tools (to date we have found 28 instances) ............... 151
Figure 10.16:
Universal practice task channel section ..................................................... 152
Executive summary
Cedefops mission is to help policy-makers and practitioners in the European Commission,
Member States and social partner organisations across Europe to make informed choices
about vocational training policy. Concentrated efforts are made to provide stakeholders with
relevant, up-to-date information and provide assistance, through the knowledge management
system, on issues of mobility, quality and transparency of qualifications. Cedefop also
supports deeper understanding of current changes in vocational education and training (VET)
by encouraging and supporting theoretical studies which are disseminated through its VET
research publications.
The VET history project should be seen in this context. Depositing Cedefops archives at the
European University Institute of Florence University was the occasion for gathering
researchers to give presentations on different aspects of VET in Europe at the First
international conference on the history of VET in Europe. The presentations concentrated on
two main issues: the rise of national VET systems in a comparative view and the
developments of VET in the context of the construction of the EC/EU and the role of
Cedefop.
This volume contains contributions from the first day of the conference on the rise of national
VET-systems in a comparative view. These do not pretend to give an exhaustive presentation
of VET in Europe, but investigate certain aspects of how, from a relatively common
apprenticeship system rooted in the guilds, a number of different forms and organisational
structures of VET came into being, even in countries with comparable economic and social
development.
A number of national and comparative aspects are covered, such as a tentative typology of
European VET systems with its three main representations: the liberal market economy model
(in England), the state regulated bureaucratic model (in France), and the dual-corporatist
model (in Germany). None of these models exists in a pure form, and though they are all
subject to change because of economic, social, and political development, a certain stability
remains, as shown by the article dealing with the structural differences between the
development of apprenticeship systems in England and in Germany due to different roles
assumed by the state. An analysis of apprenticeship strikes in British metalworking between
1919 and 1965 shows the results of the reluctance of state interference.
In contrast, the article on the development of the provision of schools and colleges for
technical and vocational education in France from the French Revolution to the Fifth Republic
shows the strong central influence of the state in a fragile alliance with the employers. A
comparison between the structures of VET in the Netherlands and in Germany raises the
question of why full-time school VET became the dominant form in the Netherlands whereas
occupational and in-company training established itself as the main form of VET in Germany,
not only covering artisanry, but also the commercial and the technical fields (i.e. industry).
Multiple forms of VET in Switzerland have given rise to a potential for innovation and
dynamism in the discussion about learning in school and/or in the workplace; these might
inspire development in other European countries; the tendency being improvement rather than
change. The article on the link between continuing education as liberal education and
enlightenment and VET in Finland, with a sideways look at development in other Nordic
countries and Germany, gives another aspect to the idea of VET models.
Two transnational VET models are presented. First is the production school concept,
developed from the French coles dArts et Mtiers, combining theory and practice, learning
and work, production and sales, and still existing in various forms, in various countries and
with various pedagogical aims. This is followed by the concept of Lehrgangsausbildung, or
the sequential method, a systematic industry-based training method widespread in the 20th
century. The volume ends with a presentation of 300 years of VET in Russia.
The contributions mentioned above do not pretend to offer an absolute truth. They present a
few highlights, and are far from a giving a comprehensive view of the many aspects of VET in
Europe. Many aspects are not covered, such as the role of the organisation of labour markets
in relation to VET, and the role of social partners in various countries and at various stages of
the development of VET, and of institutions and training providers.
We hope that the publication of the proceedings of the First international conference on the
history of VET in a comparative perspective will give rise to further investigations, debate,
and articles.
Mette Beyer Paulsen
10
1.
Introduction
Georg Hanf
Any endeavour to create a common vocational education and training (VET) policy meets
resistance. Why is any attempt to change things, even under the most highly decentralised
methods of coordination, still full of confusion and conflict? This is not just a matter of
competing sovereignties. Even when politicians from different countries want to cooperate,
want to achieve common objectives, they are not free to make decisions. They too are bound
to deep-rooted traditions, mentalities and sociopolitical structures.
An analysis on Convergence and divergence in European education and training systems
(Green et al., 1999) issued by the European Commission some years ago concludes that
European education systems would have historically shown marked structural and
developmental differences, influenced not least by their different national political systems
and modes of regulation, their different economic and labour-market structures and their
different cultural and knowledge traditions. National and historical factors continue to play a
major role (ibid., p. viii). Education systems are as varied as the histories of European States.
They have inscribed within them the various different paths to modernisation taken by the
different States. Most significantly, it is the divergences in national labour markets and forms
of labour-market regulation that ensure the continuing particularity of education and training
systems. Each of the national systems remains unique. But at the same time they show
distinct regional affinities, most notably in the German-speaking States, Mediterranean States
and Nordic States, and these geo-political patterns clearly warrant further investigation.
(ibid., p. 235).
Research tells us about path dependency of institutional development. Once on a certain track,
systems/institutions are bound to move on; they are shored up by positive feedback. As Huber
and Stephens pointed out, analyses based on small slices of time are likely to miss entirely
the way in which the past has shaped how the main actors define their interests and what
strategies are realistically available to them at any particular juncture (Huber and
Stephens, 2001, p. 33).
Since many of the formal institutions we consider will have survived for some time, analysis
of institutional design will have to be complemented by greater attention to questions of
institutional development, something that suggests the need to incorporate a somewhat
stronger temporal dimension. One can only make sense of the form and functions these
institutions have taken by viewing them in the context of a larger temporal framework that
includes the sequences of events and processes that shaped their development over time:
Looking back 500 years we see common origins in the old European cities and guilds;
200 years ago we see the crisis of the traditional structures in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution and 100 years back we see the divergent national systems taking shape.
11
The choice of Florence for the first European conference on the history of VET in a
comparative perspective was determined by the fact that the archives of the European
Communities are there and it hosts the European University Institute. At the same time this
magnificent city represents old Europe, its history. The architecture, which has survived for
centuries, still demonstrates the skills of the crafts 500 years ago. The city is also full of
symbols of the social organisation of work and life. The rise of modern big industry and of
nation-States clashed with this tradition of cities and guilds. For the nation-States, the
education system was the modern instrument to develop the competences of citizens in a
wider sense, including work related competences.
In the 18th and 19th century we find the origin of a competitive relationship between two
types of competence reproduction: safeguarding learning through practical experience and the
imitation of the master monitored by the guilds, on the one hand, and the new type organised
in schools based on the principle of a written prescription of work capacity. The competition
of these two principles, also referred to as the modernisation process in competence
reproduction, shows different patterns in the different countries: dissolution, assimilation and
transformation of the old.
The conference wanted to bring together speakers representing the different groups of
systems: the Anglo-Saxon, the German, the Mediterranean and the Nordic systems. Since we
wanted to take a wider perspective historically and geographically than the present day EU
countries, we also included Russia and Switzerland. Both had long-standing relations and
communications with the other European countries before communism and beyond total
neutrality. The history of VET systems is the history of divergence. But on the level of
teaching and learning there was still a lot in common. This is why we also included two
articles on transnational histories: one on the production-school concept, which originated in
France and was adapted by a number of countries; the other on the sequential method, a
didactical tool that was created in Russia and from there spread throughout the European
continent and further.
The conference and this reader on history has a history itself: there is a tradition of writing the
history of VET where VET has developed relatively independently of both education and
employment. The consequent heightened interest in the history of VET was manifested in a
series of five conferences in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The relative number of German
papers in this volume can be explained by this historic occurrence. Today it no longer makes
any sense to write national histories; we have reached the point where we have to re-write
history in a (comparative) European perspective.
In his reflections on a possible theoretical framework for analysing the historical development
of European VET systems, Wolf-Dietrich Greinert takes a three-step approach searching for
common principles of the various systems. VET is first embedded in national work cultures
which manifest in labour law. It is the work cultures which then form the basis of specific
VET regimes. Work cultures and VET regimes, in turn, come with leading ideas, which
legitimatise a certain didactic orientation. Based on a diachronic analysis from the Industrial
12
Revolution onwards, three general types of VET systems are identified. In Type A, the
economy takes priority from a work culture perspective; the training model is regulated
primarily by market forces. At the learning level, the functional needs of the company or the
actual job direct the didactic principle. In Type B, politics take priority from a work culture
perspective; the training model is primarily regulated by bureaucratic control. At the learning
level, academic principle is the main didactic tenet. In Type C, society takes priority from a
work culture perspective. The training model is primarily regulated by dual control, i.e. a
combination of market and bureaucracy. At the learning level, the vocational principle is the
determining didactic orientation. The structures and control models with origins in the
Industrial Revolution display remarkable endurance.
This is demonstrated with a comparative view of the history of VET in England and Germany
by Thomas Deissinger. Whereas, in Germany, the State, at the end of the 19th century, took an
active role in vocational training by establishing a legal framework, in England, due to the
successes of industrialisation achieved without any significant contribution from education, it
was a common belief that preparation for the world of work was best given on the job rather
than in formal education. The evolution of modern VET in England may be seen as
substantially shaped by the way the first industrial nation reacted to the Industrial
Revolution. This reaction in the 19th century predetermined the path for vocational training
into the 20th:
(a) by discontinuity of those principles supporting the ancient apprenticeship system and its
social framework;
(b) by a continuity of preindustrial social theory which clearly impeded the case for
educational expansion;
(c) by an insufficient platform provided for welfare and social State activities to establish
education for the people;
(d) by an obvious disjunction between educational development and industrial and economic
achievement.
How State reluctance influenced the history of VET in the UK is demonstrated by Paul Ryan
who has undertaken in-depth research into apprenticeship strikes. In his view an interesting
attribute of the modern histories of both apprenticeship and industrial relations in the UK is
the marked propensity of metalworking apprentices to take industrial action. Between 1910
and 1965 they launched a series of strikes. A range of indirect evidence suggests that
apprentice strikes had serious effects on employers, allowing them to contribute to a
sea change in wage structure during the period that in turn encouraged the subsequent decline
of apprenticeship activity. Apprentice strikes also contributed to the erosion of the already
attenuated distinction, both de jure and de facto, between apprenticeship and regular
employment. The embedding of apprenticeship in industrial relations that occurred during the
period owed much to apprentice activism. The casualty was any prospect for apprenticeship to
develop as part of VET, as occurred in central parts of continental Europe.
13
A feature of the system of vocational training in France is the extent to which that training is
provided in State school and colleges and not in the workplace. In his article, Vincent Troger
outlines the main trends in the history of vocational training from the French Revolution up to
the major reforms of the 1960s. The French suppression of forms of effective inter-mediation
between citizen and State represents the most extreme expression of the pan-European
confrontation with the dichotomy between nation-States and traditional, occupational
fraternities during the Industrial Revolution. During the 19th century and up to the First World
War, there were similar developments in Germany and France. But as industry did not
organise its own interests in VET and the unions did not play an active role in France, the
State constantly strengthened the forms of centralised control and standardisation. The policy
of modernisation launched by de Gaulle included greater public investment in human capital
and a booster for universities and schools. Thus, France turned back to its path taken during
the French Revolution.
In their historical-comparative perspective on the Netherlands
Dietmar Frommberger and Holger Reinisch raise two questions:
and
Germany,
(a) why did occupational and in-company training establish itself as the training form in
Germany beyond the realm of artisanry to include the technical and commercial fields
and why did this form of standardised workplace training not become universal in
the Netherlands?
(b) why did full-time school based VET not attain a dominant role in Germany as it did in
the Netherlands and most other European countries?
It is obvious that, in the Netherlands, there was no industry taking the initiative for its own
training as in Germany. But a clear answer is still missing because of a paucity of relevant
source analysis pertaining to training strategies for the Netherlands in a historical perspective.
Switzerland tends to be left on the sidelines in the international debate on educational reform
and rarely receives a mention in comparative international studies carried out in vocational
training research. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that Switzerland is not part of
the EU; another is that, so far, the presentation of Swiss VET to the public abroad has been
little more than rudimentary. In his brief historical account, Philipp Gonon recalls the origins
of an antagonistic debate on the question, should people learn at the actual workplace or
should they learn everything they need to know at school? In the18th century, in the age of
enlightenment, industriousness was a political and economic reform project of to be carried
out in schools. In the 19th century, other reformers brought educational standards into the
workplace to help apprentices acquire practical skills and general knowledge. It was the
repeated movement between school and workplace that ultimately led to realisation of the
potential of a third learning environment which is at the core of the most recent reform.
The emergence and transformation of national systems can be taken as outcomes of
competition between cultural programmes of VET, carried out by individual, collective and
meta-collective actors striving for certain subnational, national and supra-national aims. The
14
cultural approach propagated by Anja Heikkinen, conceives education as joint constitutor of

culture as projects or programmes at personal, collective and at societal levels. Through
discussion on continuing education in Finland, Nordic countries and Germany the
historicisation and contextualisation of models of VET is suggested. In most European
reflections on education only polarisation between academic and vocational forms of
education are discussed. The Nordic history of education, however, reminds us of the
importance of a more complex view, where different forms of education are considered from
the perspective of individual and collective growth processes, in relation to their political
functions. In the Finnish context, a basic form of education emerged as popular or citizenship
education, a holistic concept which in the 20th century has been altered by encyclopaedic
education and specialist training.
Contrasting with the development of divergence of VET systems, Johannes Meyser sets out a
pedagogical concept which spread across borders. The production-school principle combines
learning and work, theory and practice, qualifications and sales-oriented production in a
targeted manner. It has a long, if interrupted, tradition, but is still very modern. This training
precept originated in Europe and was first established in France during the 18th century
French schools were extremely influential during the establishment of vocational training
institutions in Europe. Similar production schools were founded in virtually every country
during the 19th century. In the early 20th century they lost their prestige in some countries and
were, in part, replaced by other environments of skilled worker training. Towards the end of
the century, however, the production-school model saw something of a revival and is to this
day an applied form of vocational training in many countries.
The second example of a trans-European concept in the times of divergence, presented by
Gnther Wiemann, is the sequential method, created in 1868 by the Director of the Moscow
Imperial Technical School, Victor Karlowich Della-Vos. In 1873 this learning model was
presented at the World Exhibition in Vienna and soon spread throughout Europes training
centres. A century later, in 1973, the German Federal Institute for Vocational Training
launched its first elementary metal training course, which was structured exactly along the
lines of this pattern. In 2003, 135 years later, several hundred courses across Europe evidently
adhere to the principles expounded in 1868. Undoubtedly, the training course is the most
successful and effective learning system in the short history of industrial vocational training.
Its didactic concept has merited an unprecedented dissemination across all European industrial
societies. Millions of young people have set out on their career paths through this laborious
training course and have thus made a considerable contribution to the quality of European
industrial products.
Through the centuries, before this didactic tool was invented in Russia, professional
knowledge was gathered through the journeys of journeymen to other countries everywhere in
Europe. We finish our tour dhorizon turning back to these common origins. We include a
contribution by the director of the Museum on the history of VET in Moscow,
Irina Stanislawowna Derivianko who reminds us of the journeys of Peter the Great and his
entourage. Many of the members of the Grand Embassy on these journeys underwent training
15
in various professions. Peter himself studied navigation theory abroad as well as mathematics
and geometry, and also gained experience working as a carpenter in shipyards in Zaandam, the
Netherlands. On his return to Russia he opened the School of Mathematics and Navigation in
Moscow (1701), which became the first of many vocational schools at higher, secondary and
elementary levels to be established in the centuries after.
Europe has set itself the goal of becoming a world reference for education and training by
2010. To achieve this ambitious goal implies a far greater degree of convergence. Since the
Treaty of Rome, the nation-States have been working towards the development of a common
policy for VET, giving the latter a major role to play in the vision of a Social Europe (the
sister volume of this publication focuses on this part of history). Today we are united by
common issues and priorities as well as values. But there still are different conditions and
means to achieve these. What is the whole? Is it just the sum of the all the single systems or is
it more? And where are we going to, together? We started on different tracks but is there a
station at which to stop and connect the trains? Who is the points-man setting the course and
in what direction? Do we have a mutual economic, social, educational perspective? The
answers cannot be forecast from history but no common policy will succeed without reflecting
on the past.
There is a role for VET historians, too, as Anja Heikkinen has pointed out: by recognising and
making visible certain entities, phenomena, changes and continuities as being relevant in
VET, researchers assist in defining work and education at subnational, national and
supranational levels. Traditionally, history and education have been the most nationalist
among disciplines, promoting building of the nation-States, national cultures and industries. In
the making of the European economic, educational and research area, they may promote
national concepts to influence the building of Europe. But they may also work in favour of an
intelligent coupling of different systems, designing the schedule which allows all trains to
arrive at a common destination.
References
Green, A.; Wolf, A.; Leney, T. Convergence and divergence in European education and
training systems. London: Bedford Way Papers, 1999.
Huber, E.; Stephens, J. D. Development and crisis of welfare States. Parties and policies in
global markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
16
2.
European vocational training systems: the

theoretical context of historical development
Wolf-Dietrich Greinert
The transition from school to the world of work is very different in Germany and Britain. The
contrast between these two countries is probably the most marked in Europe, although the
British seem to feel that all mainland countries south of Scandinavia use a watered-down
version of the German system or a variation on its theme. We consider that Germany has the
most pronounced version of what we would call the typical continental model.
These comments by Liverpool sociologist Ken Roberts (2000; p. 65 et seq.) may not be
objective, but we believe that their directness demonstrates the difficulty even experts have in
portraying the European vocational training landscape in a way that is easy to comprehend. If
this applies to the variety of existing training systems, how much more difficult must it be to
reduce the highly complex historical development of these qualification systems in order to
extract common elements to which experts from various disciplines can relate. The European
Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) has risen to the challenge in its
project on the History of vocational education and training in Europe in a comparative
perspective (1).
2.1.
What makes VET a system?
Historian Hermann Heimpel claims that what makes Europe so European is that its history is
the history of nations. However, this perception of nations as the building blocks of European
history acknowledges that they not only established themselves during their gradual
development processes but also depended on their relationships with one another as
productive partners and competitors (Zernack, 1994; p. 17). Numerous factors shape
relationships between nations. These include common borders and the exchange of goods.
Certain international and universal historical trends are particularly decisive. The most
influential factor governing the genesis of vocational training systems for the working masses
is undoubtedly the Industrial Revolution or the general industrialisation of the European
nations. It not only triggered far-reaching economic and technological change, but also
profoundly altered the structure of society, social interaction, lifestyles, political systems,
types of settlement and landscapes. In the wake of the revolution, the system of replenishing
human resources underwent radical restructuring in all European countries.
(1) Available from Internet: http://history.cedefop.eu.int [cited 14.10.2003]
17
Paradoxically, the process of industrialisation in Europe did not produce one uniform
vocational training model. On the contrary, it more or less destroyed the roughly
homogeneous craft-trade-based vocational training methods which had established themselves
over the centuries, and replaced them with a myriad of modern education systems, which at
first glance seem to have very little in common. Given their diversity, however, it would be
wise to be careful with the term vocational education and training system. Walter Georg
rightly pointed out that academic system theory can only refer to a system of vocational
training if the practice in question has become independent and has permanently established
itself as a selective communication network in the process of social differentiation of specific
functional subsystems. This requires a large degree of self-referential unity and disassociation
from internal social structures (Georg, 1997; p. 159).
Georg states that these kinds of independent vocational training systems, characterised by
self-referential internal structures and processing mechanisms, exist purely in
German-speaking countries under the name dual system. In other countries, both
school-based educational methods and forms of in-company initial and continuing training are
founded on the logical processes of different social subsystems. In the case of school-based
vocational training it is the meritocratic logic of general education; in the case of in-company
training it is the logic of company-based production and work organisation. Georg concludes:
The unique German approach of maintaining a self-referential vocational training system
independent of schools and businesses makes any attempt to compare it with other systems
seem like an ethnocentric misunderstanding, because usually no common means for
comparison can be found (Georg, 1997; p. 159).
Georg believes that the model for explaining specific national differences in employment
training for the masses must be expanded to incorporate the constellations of the prevailing
cultural and functional-structural relations within a society. A societys values, norms,
attitudes, convictions and ideals shape education systems, work organisation and occupational
relationships as well as the more or less stable interaction between specific national
employment training and other social subsystems such as general education and the various
employment system paradigms.
If we take the views raised above into account, we can extend or refine the criteria for
international comparisons of vocational training so that we can distinguish clearly between
vocational training systems and vocational training models. The term system should only
apply to genuinely independent, self-referential vocational training models. Additionally, a
category super-ordinate to vocational education and training is necessary to define operational
structural patterns and interactions between the social subsystems relevant to vocational
education and training. We propose the term work culture.
18
2.2.
Three work cultures
However, the concept of work culture encompasses a series of methodological problems. How
can we classify the internal correlation between these national work cultures appropriately?
Which principles of orientation and which paradigms are decisive? How can we avoid
oversimplified idiosyncratic interpretations or biased paradigms?
A study by Bercusson, Mckenberger and Supiot seems to present a viable way of narrowing
down this highly complex topic by attempting to establish a methodical approach to the
comparison of labour law and work cultures (Mckenberger, 1998). They used a double
testing procedure to examine selected fields in Britain, France and Germany. One aim was to
discover what ideas of waged employment lawyers from the three countries have which
influence their actions and decisions (work culture in day-to-day legal routine). Another was
to learn what ideas and experiences representatives of both sides of industry in the cited
countries have of the law in general and of labour law in particular.
The study (Bercusson et al., 1992) presented of three paradigmatic contexts incorporating the
labour legislation of the three countries. Each paradigm lends shape and form to the prevailing
legislation it describes (Mckenberger, 1998; p. 37 et seq.):
(a) In Britain the production relationship is regarded as no more than a market process in
which the market participants are members of society, i.e. employees, employers and
partners to collective agreement. The image of law is correspondingly negative,
characterised by absenteeism, or non-intervention in the market process. Rule of law,
not of men is the appropriate paradigm.
(b) In France even the production relationship is seen as a political entity. The players
involved are the state and its executors, known as inspecteurs de travail. This emphasis
on the political aspect finds expression in the recognition of the ordre public social. This
is a regulation giving central control of working life to the state (not to the market as in
Britain or to the interplay between private autonomy and the legal system as in Germany).
The paradigmatic background to this Republican version is the majest de la Loi, as the
greatest achievement of the grande rvolution.
(c) In Germany the production relationship is regarded as a kind of community which has a
tradition of reciprocal responsibility and consideration of the whole. The rules of this
social community are, as in Britain, seldom imposed directly by politicians. The social
partners themselves set, elaborate and correct them to some degree. However, they play a
more active role than social partners in Britain, following a cautious, specific case-related
process of adaptation, which arises from interaction between judges and lawyers. The
paradigms of the civil constitutional state, private autonomy and supervision by the law
characterise this.
The three countries also have different priorities in the area of industrial relations and labour
law. In England there is a primacy of economics, in France a primacy of politics and in
19
Germany a primacy of society. The authors of the above-mentioned study feel that these also
encompass the countries differing priorities of security and freedom. Social security was
developed earlier and more completely in Germany than in France and Britain. However, it is
accompanied by a loss of freedom. In France the right of political articulation, action and
organisation, even militancy, have priority over social security. In Britain freedom also takes
precedence over security, not in the same way as in France, but in the form of market activity
and collective bargaining. According to the study, in France freedom is the domain of politics.
Freedom is achieved within (and through) the state. In Britain the issue of freedom from the
state dominates (Mckenberger, 1998; p. 38).
This model illustrates that work culture, like culture in general, actually conveys a vague idea
in a consistent context (Georg, 1997; p. 161). The methods for approaching the specific
national differences have certainly not been exhausted in the above discussion. However, we
can already deduce something that culture-oriented investigations have confirmed as a general
tendency: the incredible persistence of culturally inherent values and traditions and national
mentalities (Hofstede, 1993). These factors have made the transformation of social systems
extremely difficult.
Applied to our task of identifying European vocational training models, this would mean that
although they represent a specific response to changing technological socioeconomic and
political problems, their structural change processes are governed by a considerable and
persistent tendency to cling to tradition. Tradition and modernity are not adversaries. They are
actually identical. We can talk of a specific tradition-bound modernity.
2.3.
Three vocational training regimes
Of course, we could consider individual countries in isolation when describing the historical
development of vocational training in Europe, and restrict ourselves to examining and
compiling as complete a summary of the relevant sources and their inherent interpretations as
possible, thus presenting an account of historical events. However, the academic and practical
use of such a small-scale venture would be limited and this study is concerned with
expounding specifically European aspects. This requires us to analyse dialogue and
cooperation which may have occurred between European nations, and of which we knew little
or nothing until now, on reshaping their vocational training under the influence or pressures of
the changes sparked by industrialisation. What specific principles, organisational forms and
learning concepts from this dialogue have proved to be trendsetting and have left their mark in
the form of national institutions?
To date historical vocational training research has been able to identify three classical
European training models, which formed during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution in
response to the erosion of the craft-trade-based vocational training model (Greinert, 1999).
They are: the liberal market economy model, the state-regulated bureaucratic model and the
dual-corporatist model.
20
The liberal market economy model, first realised in Britain in the 18th and 19th century, forms
a market relationship between the functional subsystems of labour, capital and education
emerging from the social evolution process influenced by industrial capitalism. The main
protagonists of labour and capital, who should be freed from traditional restraints as far as
possible, also maintain free market relations with the new education subsystem. Structural
disadvantages prevent workers from using the education subsystem to market themselves as a
qualified production factor. Thus they must sell themselves as mere human resources and
accept the social consequences, which can be disastrous (e.g. child labour).
The corresponding market model of qualifying the workforce has the following
characteristics:
(a) a quantitative relationship between training supply and training demand, regulated by the
market. Those supplying various skills and those demanding them can meet on a
voluntary basis in a in principal free market (i.e. training market not primarily
controlled by the state);
(b) the type of vocational qualifications (qualitative aspect) ultimately depends on their
projected application in the labour market and in the actual businesses and authorities.
The transferability of vocational qualifications between companies varies according to
the market, but is usually fairly limited;
(c) training practices are not particularly standardised. Schooling, in-company training,
alternating school and in-company training and organisationally and technically advanced
training methods can all be marketed (e.g. as distance learning courses or via e-learning).
However, few widely accepted certificates exist;
(d) the cost of training is borne individually, usually by the person requiring training.
However, businesses also often pay fees if they are supplying the training themselves. In
this case training courses usually providing partial vocational qualifications are
subject to the principle of cost minimisation;
(e) countries with market models of vocational training distinguish sharply between general
vocational education and specific vocational training, both as definitions and within
institutions. Vocational education is always conducted in state schools, vocational
training stems from voluntary agreements between market players.
The state-regulated bureaucratic model, first implemented rigorously in France, uses the new
education subsystem to create a political, power-based relationship between capital and
labour. For general socio-political reasons, structurally disadvantaged workers are qualified
with the help of a state-regulated and state-financed education sector (which also includes
vocational training). Workers can then engage the capital subsystem, again within a
state-regulated framework. This model contains the risk that vocational training institutions
may be too strongly influenced by the logical structures of the general educational system and
degenerate to a subordinate branch of it.
21
The corresponding education-driven model of vocational training has the following

characteristics:
(a) the quantitative relations between training demand and concrete vocational training are
determined by state bodies or bureaucrats. Since this kind of demand planning cannot go
into great detail, it functions most effectively when it is based on a limited contingent of
basic occupations;
(b) the types of occupational qualifications (qualitative aspect) are less dependent on their
immediate application in companies. Abstraction, verbalisation and theorisation usually
form the central principles of vocational schools curricula. Simple occupations
characterised by practical activities cannot implement these principles in a desirable
fashion;
(c) school training models are usually characterised by a clear differentiation of individual
training course types. Admission to the various schools, which are starkly scaled
according to qualification demand and the leaving certificate obtainable, normally
depends on the various leaving certificates from general education schools or on special
entrance examinations;
(d) vocational training in schools is financed by the state budget. Its inherent limitations do
not allow the extension of vocational schools to accommodate the full cohort of a school
year. Seen also from this perspective, education driven vocational training models seem
mainly to embody an elitist system which primarily focuses on imparting higher-level
professional qualifications;
(e) education driven vocational training models are almost necessarily subject to the
escalator effect, i.e. their courses have a tendency to keep moving up the qualifications
ladder, at least in the medium term. Consequently, new training courses or institutions
must constantly be devised to replace lower qualification levels. Thus, vocational training
for all is in an almost permanent state of crisis.
The dual-corporatist model, which mainly exists in German-speaking countries, uses a
relatively independent vocational training subsystem as a means of communication between
labour, capital and state. The intervention of legally revived intermediary institutions, the
state-regulated chambers, which administrate and manage the qualification of workers on
behalf of the state, at least allows some limitation of state and market failures in one important
public field. However, the clear organisational and legal detachment of the vocational training
system particularly from the higher-level education system (grammar schools, universities)
creates considerable problems as regards progression routes.
The corresponding dual system of vocational training has the following characteristics:
22
(a) dual vocational training systems are largely isolated from the general education sector.
They have their own organisational structure and training regulations as they are mainly
run privately. Their twofold market and bureaucratic regulation pattern requires complex
coordination;
(b) companies are the primary learning venue in this cooperative system. Young people
sign a private training contract with the company as employees with special trainee
status. As they also attend vocational school, they are legally pupils and are subject to the
rules of the general education system;
(c) training method and content are chiefly determined by the company or by internal interest
groups. Employers, trade unions and state bodies jointly decide on career profiles and
training ordinances in a regulated process. They are legitimised through an act of
parliament;
(d) individual companies usually pay for the training. The costs can be declared as operating
expenses for tax purposes. The company provides its trainees with remuneration which is
fixed by collective bargaining. Vocational schools are financed by the public sector;
(e) dual vocational training systems have a traditional, craft-based background. Three
traditional principles have endured to this day. The principle of vocation (Berufsprinzip),
the principle of self-administration, which applies to the main, in-company part at least
and the principle of learning while working.
These three vocational training models constitute prototypes, which were generated in the
European nations search for new ways of approaching vocational training for the masses in
the wake of industrialisation (Greinert, 1999). It is unlikely that this process produced any
further models. We maintain that all other vocational training models which arose in the
various European countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries are variations and/or
combinations of these three prototypes or basic models.
2.4.
Three concepts legitimising three learning orientations
Reflecting on the formation of specific types of vocational training in the industrial age, a
European dimension becomes obvious if one attempts to question the findings outlined in
Sections 2.2 and 2.3 with regard to the ideological context. Our search for underlying
ideological concepts of the processes described there can identify three European main
streams which specifically interact. They are traditionalism, liberalism and rationalism.
These three central legitimising concepts of European thought form the ideological context to
the three vocational training models. The concepts do not only apply to the regulatory level,
but also structure the operational level, i.e. the actual vocational training activities and the
specific ways of learning. This approach has much in common with the three ideal
qualification styles devised by Thomas Deissinger (Deissinger, 1998).
23
We define our typology of legitimatisation for vocational training models in Europe as

follows:
Traditionalism legitimises vocational orientation. According to the modern,
post-enlightenment view, this legitimatisation concept is ideally based on tradition, i.e. on the
one hand on the vocational practices implemented in Europe since the Middle Ages and, on
the other, on occupations as a way of categorising organisational forms of human resources.
From this perspective, occupations are understood as specific combinations of the elements
work, competences and earnings. The activities they involve are determined according to
traditions and social arrangements.
The core elements in individual occupations are grouped into characteristic exchange patterns.
As a standardised social exchange pattern, an occupation forms the central link in social
relationships, which are determined according to their role. However, occupations are also
the primary source of identity, i.e. of the image individuals have of themselves and through
which they present themselves to their environment. This has not changed fundamentally in
Europe.
The occupation category allows a training model to develop the capacity to transfer
economic, social and pedagogical issues and problems to a systemic logical framework and to
process them productively. This capability, which modern system theory terms
self-reference, can engender an independent training system.
Liberalism legitimises market orientation. This concept is based on the teachings and
principles of economic liberalism and classical national economics. The central assumption is
that people are capable of organising their social interaction efficiently, particularly their
working life, on the basis of their own reason and insights.
Along with the principles of a consistent decentralised economic order, private property,
free-market competition, free choice of profession and/or job, the merit principle, etc.,
economic liberalism rejects any state intervention in the economy, which is in the hands of
autonomous individuals, and demands that state policy be limited to satisfying a few basic
general requirements. This includes the avoidance of compulsion (imposition of legally
regulated duties). Strict consideration of the individuals responsibility for him/herself
should not only be interpreted as an element of freedom. It also entirely fulfils liberal
expectations of the function of a social adaptation mechanism.
Market-oriented vocational training arrangements impart only employable skills,
i.e. company-specific practical knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for available jobs.
Young people are not required to gain any particular qualification after completing
compulsory schooling, before starting their working life. Their integration into the social and
labour system is primarily dependent on market pressures.
24
Rationalism legitimises academic orientation. This is based on the conviction that academic
rationality should apply when setting the organisational didactic principle for vocational
qualifications. Practical access to the material world should no longer be gained by
retrospectively applying scientific findings to the tradition-bound experiences of individual
companies and occupations, but by subjugating all practices to scientific monitoring and
experiments.
The concept of attaining vocational qualifications via an academic approach is an immediate
product of the Enlightenment and embodies the spirit of modernity, that is, that science,
particularly mathematics and the exact natural sciences, will rule the world, especially in the
field of technology. Specialised academic training becomes the standardising didactic
principle throughout all levels of vocational qualification.
Strictly knowledge-based vocational training models are most effective in so-called
higher-level, theory-oriented (i.e. academic) professions. However, achieving the necessary
integration of intellectual competences and the relevant practical skills remains a problem.
The three legitimatisation models of modern vocational training approaches in Europe
outlined above are based on central ideas which can be seen as the new principles of order for
human interaction and modern interpretations of the world since the Enlightenment. However,
in cases of traditional orientation, significant doubts may surface. We feel they are unfounded.
The most famous Bildungsroman of the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Emile, deals
with the problem of religious orientation. In view of the Enlightenments philosophical
relativity of all religions, Rousseau saw no rational reason for one particular choice. All
religions of revelation presented equally plausible options. However, Rousseau surprisingly
recommends his pupils to stick to the religion of their ancestors and justifies this by referring
to tradition. Viewed critically, this position could be seen as overtaking the Enlightenment.
The vocational training expert Herwig Blankertz made the following comment: Tradition is
the arsenal of values which we acquire not because our sense tells us to, but because we
believe in it thanks to the heritage that previous generations have passed down to us [...].
Rousseaus pedagogical approach did not overtax the mind but inserted the power of tradition
into the rational system of natural upbringing as the last word on legitimising human
orientation to norms (Blankertz, 1982, p. 78 et seq.).
We believe that vocational, market and academic orientation can be considered as didactic
principles in all European vocational training models, whatever the dominating specific
structural or regulatory principle in the respective country might be. In the German system, the
principles of market orientation (e.g. in vocational continuing training) and academic
orientation (in practically all vocational schools) join the vocational principle as important
factors at the operational level. The French training model incorporates occupational and
market orientation alongside academic orientation. Even the strongly market-oriented British
training model is also structured according to occupations and according to the specialist
vocational subject system in the countrys further education institutions.
25
2.5.
Conclusion
To summarise, our observations have produced three structural models of vocational training
in Europe. Viewed from three different perspectives, each demonstrates characteristics which
can be combined into a higher typological unit:
(a) in type A, the economy takes priority from a cultural perspective. Training is regulated
primarily by market forces. The functional needs of the company or the actual job are the
leading didactic principle;
(b) in type B, politics take priority from a cultural perspective. Training is primarily
regulated by bureaucratic control. The academic principle is the main didactic tenet;
(c) in type C, society takes priority from a cultural perspective. Training is primarily
regulated by dual control, i.e. a combination of market and bureaucracy. The vocational
principle is the determining didactic orientation.
These three types of vocational training have been the building blocks for vocational training
arrangements in various European countries since the Industrial Revolution. They have great
tenacity. A universal decisive move away from this tradition cannot be perceived in Europe.
The modernisation and reform of vocational training models in Britain and France in the last
20 years of the 20th century provide evidence of this. In both cases it is clear that the central
reform initiatives (national vocational qualifications and alternance training respectively)
adhered strictly to the training regimes developed in the 19th century (Greinert, 1999).
Politicians in both Britain and France tried to push through alternatives, but ultimately they
were bound to the path their countries had taken. The same holds true for Germany: the
various approaches to make vocational training more flexible did not really alter the
traditional patterns.
The European structures and control models established in the first Industrial Revolution are
displaying remarkable endurance. Despite changing technical and socioeconomic influences,
even despite wide-ranging explicit political attempts to replace the respective inherited
model with allegedly more attractive and more effective alternatives, the typical procedures
and organisational structures of the classic European models presented here maintain the
upper hand in the countries in which they originated.
26
References
Bercusson, B.; Mckenberger, U.; Supiot, A. Application du droit du travail et diversit
culturelle en Europe. Nantes: ARSH Association de Recherches en Sciences Humaines,
1992.
Blankertz, H. Die Geschichte der Pdagogik: von der Aufklrung bis zur Gegenwart.
Wetzlar: Bchse der Pandora, 1982.
Deissinger, T. Beruflichkeit als organisierendes Prinzip der deutschen Berufsausbildung.
Markt Schwaben: Eusl, 1998.
Deutschmann, C. Lsst sich der Berufsbegriff interkulturell bertragen? In Striegnitz, M.;
Pluskwa, M. (eds). Berufsausbildung und beruflichen Weiterbildung in Japan und in der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Rehburg: Loccum Evangelische Akademie, 1989, p. 417-424.
Georg, W. Berufliche Bildung des Auslands: Japan. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1993.
Georg, W. Zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Berufsbildung im internationalen Vergleich. In
Arnold, R.; Dobischat, R.; Ott, B. (eds). Weiterungen der Berufspdagogik. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1997, p. 153-166.
Greinert, W-D. Berufsqualifizierung und dritte Industrielle Revolution. Baden-Baden: Nomos,
1999.
Hofstede, G. Organisationsentwicklung in verschiedenen Kulturen. In Fatzer, G. (ed.)
Organisationsentwicklung fr die Zukunft: ein Handbuch. Cologne: EHP Edition
Humanistische Psychologie, 1993, p. 327-348.
Mckenberger, U. Nationale Arbeitsrechte und soziales Europa. In Gattero, B. (ed.). Modell
Deutschland, Modell Europa. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1998, p. 33-54.
Roberts, K. Grossbritannien. In Richter, I.; Sardei-Biermann, S. (eds). Jugendarbeitslosigkeit:
Ausbildungs- und Beschftigungsprogramme in Europa. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 2000,
p. 57-77.
Zernack, K. Polen und Russland: zwei Wege der europischen Geschichte. Berlin: Propylen,
1994.
27
3.
Apprenticeship systems in England and

Germany: decline and survival
Thomas Deissinger
3.1.
Introduction
The issue of how to integrate the next generation into the labour market both quantitatively
and qualitatively is common to all nations. In general, vocational education policy in each
nation concentrates on its traditional relationship between education/training and employment,
and on how responsible companies should be for designing, implementing and financing. The
fact that many developing countries and those experiencing economic growth are
experimenting with alternating or dual/dualistic vocational training concepts does not
primarily indicate a positive attitude towards the German training model (Deissinger, 2003;
Stockmann, 1999). Instead it suggests that their governments have recognised the wisdom of a
practical learning approach and the importance of imparting the right skills for working life.
Despite these aims, vocational training tends to evolve in a way that seriously challenges
political and economic traditions and thus tempers passions for excessive reform. However,
this by no means excludes adopting ideas from foreign models. While developing countries
lack sophisticated institutional differentiation, Europes specific national attitudes and cultures
ensure continuity, either manifestly or latently.
Comparative educational science is thus assigned the task of collecting data on training
structures and furnishing an explicatio, an analysis of the factors, motivations, tendencies
and determinants shaping VET (Schneider, 1961; p. 86). Addressing the origins of schooling,
Reichwein talks about the inherent teleology of its functional relationship to the culture as a
whole. He states that training institutions are more than the product of abstract pedagogical
ideas and claims it is a whole array of practical impulses which shape educational systems
(Reichwein, 1963; p. 89 et seq.). The system theory view, which regards society as an entity
seeking to reproduce and maintain its population, also postulates that the whole system claims
the services of societal subsystems (Parsons, 1976). Educational institutions are anything but
simple mechanical reproductions of their blueprints. They are the result of responses to a
societys needs through its turbulent history (Georg, 1997; p. 83). For this reason, comparative
VET research must take a multiplane approach. A simple look at the current and historical
contexts of national education and vocational training systems provides insight into countries
idiosyncrasies (Schriewer, 1987; p. 632 et seq.).
This stratified approach is particularly important in places where homologous concepts and
notions that have endured through history confront one another. In Germanys
apprenticeships, the basic model of initial vocational training took on new forms under the
28
dual system to respond to the needs of self-industrialisation and national determination.

However, in England, apprenticeships have undergone successive, sustained marginalisation.
The following historical analysis attempts to reconstruct the two countries different
development processes and derive an explanation. It will posit reader familiarity with the
structural peculiarities of the German vocational training system and make detailed references
to developments in England (more details in Deissinger, 1992; 1993; 1994).
3.2.
Structural differences between German and English

apprenticeship
Classical occupational sociology (Beck et al., 1980) states that Germanys occupational
system has a kind of socialisation function. Social and personal behaviour patterns are taught
along with the relevant technical and practical job skills. Since apprenticeship in Germany is
embedded in a regulatory framework, both the macro and micro levels of the vocational
training system contain structural dictates that ensure training programmes have complex
skill profiles (Zabeck, 1992; Deissinger, 2001b). Their ordering function implies that the
wide range of in-company training activities is considered an organisational and educational
unit (Harney and Storz, 1994; p. 355). The system of State-recognised training occupations
has its own subjective view of employment and a unique relationship to the tertiary sector
(Harney, 1985; p. 126).
The principles of dual learning location and dual responsibility are merely a component and a
visible manifestation of a training system structured according to the principle of
vocationalism. We should mention the organising principle of the German training system
along with the principle of vocationalism (Deissinger, 1998). The organising principle
specifically structures the learning environment and learning processes and clearly
differentiates the systems functions from other training options. The following quality
criteria are decisive:
(a) apprenticeships are the responsibility of the training enterprise under employment law.
This partially releases them from the public sectors protective and educational
obligations;
(b) apprenticeships have a public character, since their training mandate separates them
from service performance processes. This lifts the concept of vocation above the
concept of job;
(c) the articles of apprenticeships require subjecting the learning process to a binding form of
didactic regimentation, producing marketable skills;
(d) apprenticeships are organised in a dual system in terms of both institutions and teaching.
This facilitates the learning processes which represent various mentalities and
philosophies;
29
German vocational training, including its institutions and teaching methods, can be described
as highly structured despite its close ties to business and its market dependence. English
vocational training structures, on the other hand, have for decades suffered from excessive
market orientation combined with companies reluctance to provide training. England exhibits
considerable problems in qualifying and integrating young people (Perry, 1976). Gertrude
Williams, one of the most committed advocates of training reform in the years after the
Second World War, made the following observations on the shortcomings of the English
vocational training system (Williams, 1963; p. 7):
(a) in England no external authority supervises training. Since no final examinations are held
either, it is impossible to say how many apprentices acquire the minimum skills needed
for their occupation;
(b) proper training programmes are very rare. Apprentices are expected to acquire their skills
by watching;
(c) classes accompanying apprenticeships are not obligatory and we can assume that not
more than 30 % of apprentices are given the opportunity to attend school alongside their
training;
(d) even if enterprises do allow trainees to attend classes, they are not interested in their
apprentices progress in the trade school.
Simons suggests that the situation in Englands modern vocational training system is a result
of the lack of compulsory further education. She believes that Kerschensteiners further
education reform established the pattern in Germany. While the Germans were adopting
educational policies, the English could not get beyond the planning and discussion stage, even
after World War II. The few laws that were passed proved to be ineffective (Simons, 1966;
p. 124 et seq.). Instead, England retained a VET system based entirely on business principles.
Looking at the process in Germany, we can see that craft trades again became the normal
models of occupational training, thanks to the Handwerkerschutzgesetz (Craft Trade Workers
Protection Act) of 1897 and the support of policies favouring SME expansion (Lenger, 1988;
p. 134 et seq.). Liberalism could not gain as much ground or validation in Germany as in other
countries. The weight of conservative legitimisation models of vocational education upheld
the anti-industrial position during the free trade period (beginning with the North German
Confederations 1869 Industrial Code) and later in the 20th century, particularly in the years
after the Second World War (Stratmann, 1982; p. 183 et seq.). In contrast to the advanced
industrial nations of England and France, this mentality prevailing in Germany guaranteed the
survival of the Meisterlehre (apprenticeship with a master craftsman). A second characteristic
of the German system is that the institution of the Berufschule (vocational school) has been a
fixture in the vocational training landscape since the end of the 19th century. This has
enriched training content but also formally dovetailed theoretical education with practice in a
company (Blankertz, 1979; p. 277 et seq.). The craft trades asserted that companies were the
correct learning location for vocational training. Berufschulen arose as a synthesis of
30
reactionary vocational training policy, in which craft trades played a leading role as the model
of German vocational education, and the successful attempt to rehabilitate the German
education system with the help of classical German vocational training theory (Blttner,
1965; p. 27 et seq.). However, the dual system is not an educational theory construct. It
emerged from the practical consideration that in-company vocational training needed to be
complemented.
English apprenticeships have suffered a sad fate. To this day, companies are notoriously
indifferent to ensuring that their future employees receive thorough training, despite the
traditional links between companies and qualification schemes. At no time in the history of
VET in England have companies offset the States laissez-faire, which was statutory until
1964. This failure of free enterprise to fill the gap contradicts the fact that this type of
vocational training system is precisely a result of the agreement of the executive and
legislative branches of government to limit their interference in the economy, which has been
taken for granted since the Industrial Revolution. In 1964 the British governmentfelt
compelled to declare vocational training its affair. This commitment was reiterated in 1973
and again in the Thatcher era (Deissinger and Greuling, 1994). The decisive trigger was the
dramatic slump in in-company apprenticeships which began at the end of the 1950s (Ryan,
2001; p. 139).
The policy of the Thatcher government aimed less at reforming the structure of training than
at providing financial incentives. It did not focus on reviving apprenticeship (Deissinger and
Greuling, 1994). The subsequent innovation, Modern Apprenticeships, introduced in 1993/94
(Unwin and Wellington, 1995; Fuller and Unwin, 1998), represented a slight change of
direction in vocational training. Ryan describes the motivation and objectives of this initiative,
which until now has proved to be a stable, if not fully pervasive segment of the qualification
system (Ryan, 2001; p. 133).
British apprenticeship is in upheaval. After a protracted decline, a major revitalisation
initiative, Modern Apprenticeship (MA), was launched in 1994. As MAs weaknesses have
become clear, reforms have been adopted, and proposals for further reform are currently under
discussion []. Government support for apprenticeship is motivated by several factors: low
rates of learning and qualification amongst 16-19 year olds; a wish to increase the supply of
intermediate skills, with apprenticeship as a favoured means, given its benefits for youth
employment; and the failings of previous efforts, notably the 1980s Youth Training Scheme
[].
Modern Apprenticeships are not merely conceived as a means of fighting youth
unemployment, but are intended to fill the qualification gap of both white-collar and
blue-collar workers (Vickerstaff, 1998; p. 220). However, a closer look reveals that it has not
simply reactivated the classic apprenticeship system (Snell, 1996; p. 319). It mirrors two
essential features of the Thatcher governments approach to vocational training. First, Modern
Apprenticeships are cofinanced by the public sector, making them a State initiative for
revitalising the training system (Ertl, 1998; p. 171). Second, it is linked to the national
31
vocational qualifications system established in 1986, since apprentices have to attain a

national vocational qualification of at least level 3. It also differs from the classic English
model, and from the dual system in Germany as well, in that although Modern Apprenticeship
trainees have a training contract, companies are not obliged to fix a definite duration.
Nevertheless, specifying training curricula guards against companies having too much
influence and control over vocational qualifications. The scheme does not focus solely on
outcomes (operationalisable training results), but also considers approaches to the
qualification process and the training content. However, we must not overlook the fact that the
Modern Apprenticeship constitutes just one of a range of education options. School-based
vocational courses at colleges of further education and university courses are in much higher
demand than non-academic in-company training. This contrasts with the situation in Germany.
Approximately half the initial training participants in the United Kingdom fell under an
in-company training scheme, including apprenticeships (European Commission et al., 1997;
p. 62).
Two main trends characterise English vocational training policy of the last 20 years. One
reflects the basic understanding that companies are responsible for designing vocational
training programmes. This policy has always involved influencing the contours of vocational
training paths. Examples are Youth Training Schemes (the name may constantly change, but
the concept does not), currently under the guise of Foundation Apprenticeships, and
(Advanced) Modern Apprenticeships.
The other trend includes the implementation of a National Qualifications Framework and the
development of the all-embracing 16-19 Curriculum in the 1990s (Higham et al., 1996;
Dearing, 1995). However, the latter does not shape an independent, self-regulating vocational
training system, but the integration of trades based on the concept of lifelong learning. The
paths are clearly caught in the conflict between heterogeneous educational requirements and
homogeneous training and qualification approaches, and thus constitute individualised
tracks. The most recent examples are the terminological convergence of youth training
schemes and apprenticeships and the renaming of general national vocational qualifications as
vocational A-levels, which is meant to emphasise their similarity to the secondary school
certificate needed for university admission and their claim to be a part of the national
qualifications framework.
Therefore, we can say that British educational policy has been undergoing vocationalisation
since the 1980s, but cannot claim that the country has developed an independent vocational
training subsystem. The national qualifications framework is clearly a hotchpotch of
disjointed approaches, despite the fact that its stated purpose is to integrate and to promote
transfer between different education and training paths and to create (formal) equality among
qualifications on the same level. Two academic paths and one mainly vocational path exist.
The reason for this dichotomy is probably the fact that England has no clear institutional
stipulations, legal regulations on training, and that the various training providers act more or
less autonomously, competing against one another in a variety of ways on the open training
market and forging links with other players. (Reuling, 2001; p. 241). This is demonstrated in
32
the basic philosophy of British vocational training policy, which advocates modular structures
and competence-based training. The continuing lack of a legal framework provides further
evidence. One reason for the absence is the dominance of the economic freedom principle,
another is that politicians have never made a concerted effort to introduce one (Ryan, 2001).
3.3.
The end of the old occupational structure during the

Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, which began in England around 1760, completed a development
whose seeds, both intellectual and tangible, had been sown in the pre-industrial era. In the face
of the flourishing textile industry, the prescriptive strength of the old economic order could
not resist the sudden growth of capitalism, and the importance of an apprenticeship as a
prerequisite for working or managing dwindled. It is noteworthy that the Elizabethan Statute
of Apprentices that dated back to 1563 (Deissinger, 1992; p. 34 et seq.), which approved and
sustained the seven-year training period stipulated by guild code, remained in force, at least on
paper, until 1814. It was only at the culmination of industrialisation, starting in 1812, that
there was parliamentary debate on the retention of the old English economic order which, in
practical terms, had long since become defunct. The old, professionally oriented crafts and the
countrys conservative, romantic bastion took a final stand against the representatives of
liberal economic thinking (Deissinger, 2001a).
Parliamentary debate revolved around the clauses in the Statute of Apprentices which
prescribed a seven-year training period and those which were intended to protect craft trades
from the practice of free employment as was adopted in cottage industries and factories. The
apprentice campaign failed for want of political support and was formally ended by laws
passed in 1814 and 1835. The law of 1814 abolished the protected status of the seven-year
apprenticeship as an occupational prerequisite. This was the end of de jure guild sovereignty
in the occupational and economic order. The abolition of the Statute of Apprentices doomed
the ideal of a regulated occupational order to succumb to the challenges and economic
temptations that the golden age of industrialisation had to offer. Once again the law was
compliant: in 1835 the Municipal Corporations Act was passed. Its intent was to suppress
guild malpractice in the realm of town administration where they were still dominant.
Although the law did not abolish these bodies, the outcome was a levelling of tax rates for all
taxpayers in the interest of unimpeded economic development. The privileges of the guilds
were restrained since the practice of a trade was no longer subject to the town charters and
consequently guild membership.
It is appropriate, with regard to England, to speak of economic and social developments in the
late 18th and the early 19th century which were different from those on the Continent, not
only in their level of advancement. English industrialism found focal points in the West
Riding and Lancashire in the 18th century and in the Midlands in the 19th century. The
delayed industrial development on the Continent is closely related to the fact that it underwent
33
no English-style technological revolution in the 19th century (Landes, 1983; p. 169).

Production methods in the cotton industry, in particular, were entirely revised, bringing new
types of organisation to the factory system, radically changing the working conditions of the
employees. The practice of employing underage, untrained and semi-skilled trained workers in
this new trade was unencumbered by the restrictions of the traditional professional code. In
1851, 41 % of Manchesters 12-year olds, 60 % of its 13-year olds and 76 % of its 14-year
olds were gainfully employed (Anderson, 1971; p. 75). Towns grew around the factories.
While more of Englands population lived in the city than on the land by 1851, Germany only
reached this level at the end of the 19th century, and France only after the First World War. In
England, only a quarter of working men were still involved in agriculture around 1850; in
Germany farm workers still outnumbered those in industry in 1895 (Landes, 1983; p. 181).
3.4.
Liberalism and the tardy social State
Apart from the dynamics of the Industrial Revolution, with its creation of new occupations
and its massive influence on the social environment of the workforce, the primary drive that
sealed the fate of the old trade order in England was the spirit of the liberal era. Brentano
describes an increasing hostility to all forms of state intervention in the freedom of
commercial practice during the early 19th century (Brentano, 1871; p. 128). The special
destiny of England is deeply rooted both in the national character of the English and in the
practical application and economic legitimisation of the anthropocentric social ethics of
Calvinism and the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment. They not only entail the decline of artisanry
and the social and economic order that supported them, they also constitute the essence of
19th century social policy.
Evidence of underdeveloped social policy can be seen in two main fields. One is the handling
of the social question, particularly the matter of child labour. The other involves the
conception of State organisation. This differs from the German pattern in that the outlines of a
bureaucratic State were only tentatively created after half a century of industrialisation (Rohe,
1984; p. 167 et seq.). The professed liberalism of classical economics and political economy
were as pervasive in the market place as Puritanisms moral dictates were in civic life. The
thesis of Max Weber on the interrelations of capitalism and Protestantism is pertinent.
Sociohistorical indicators corroborate this tenet, and thereby assert the importance of the
Protestant Ethic as one of the historical bases of modern individualism (Weber, 1920). The
gamut of liberal thought runs from John Locke to John Stuart Mill. From the anthropological
premise of man being a creature concerned with his own advantage, liberal thinkers called for
the dissolution of those bonds which restrained social progress and thereby restricted the
wealth of nations. It was self-evident to these thinkers that the economy was a field of fair
play (Freyer, 1966; p. 113) and that the State is a guarantor of individual rights but has no
economically interventionist mandate. Such a reduction of state function corresponded above
all to economic dictates and challenged both the pre-industrial order and the new
welfare-oriented policy of social conservatism (Deissinger, 2001a).
34
Due to fluctuations in the social order, and given both a social policy that had prescribed the
principle of social control since Elizabethan times (Johnson, 1970) and the dearth of
socio-occupational integration, education for the lower orders was conceived of as entailing
nothing beyond the harmless first elements of knowledge (Altick, 1973; p. 255). A state
church linked to the old social order, and the influences of tendencies from
congregation-governed denominations gave rise at the turn of the 18th century to a Protestant
mentality (Kluxen, 1985; p. 526-531) with far-reaching consequences for the Victorian Age
which seemed to combine socially conservative and embryonic progressive thought without
apparent contradiction. In the matter of education, the autonomy of the church led to the
primacy of religion in general and vocational education, which explains why it was 1870
before the State could take charge of educational policy, and even then this was part of a
compromise. The law permitting state schools to exist alongside denominational and private
institutions, where the latter were not in a position to guarantee education, was a harbinger of
the British disease (Deissinger, 1992; p. 295 et seq.).
In describing the Anglo-Saxon relationship between educational progress and
industrialisation, it is axiomatic that economics dictated what was to be done or not to be done
in the non-economic field. The lack of education for children and young people was
undeniably a product of the demands of factories on their apprentices. The half-time system
of education, a social conservative policy among the factory acts which permitted the
combination of school education with factory work, is the most obvious indicator of the
subordination of necessary pedagogical and social policy to the value of the human as a
commodity in the industrial production system. There is proof that the rate of illiteracy in
factory towns was well above the national average and that the half-time system was
inadequate in the second half of the 19th century. While the first factory act (the Factory
Health and Morals Act of 1802) only made token provisions for school education to
supplement apprentice training, the statute of 1901 stated clearly that 12 was the minimum
age for factory employment. Young pupils were only allowed to work part-time until the age
of 15. These laws are not, however, to be construed as a brief for part-time vocational
education. Classes were limited to the traditional primary educational canon of the church and
private schools. The scholastic education of workers was only intended to furnish them with
such social competences as were necessary for factory morals and discipline. The factory laws
were not damned by liberals of the day but were nonetheless viewed with reservation. The
limiting of factory work whether its motivation was humanitarian or pedagogical was
ultimately a macroeconomic question, a matter of the distribution of wealth. Under such
premises the half-time system, just as other institutional forms of primary education for the
lower orders, remained subject to conflict between ideological positions, whereby the
standpoints and interests of the industrial middle class proved particularly resistant to any
welfare-state attempt to establish a national system of education and training (Deissinger,
1992; p. 223 et seq.).
35
3.5.
The adaptation crisis in the second half of the 19th century
There are many reasons to conclude that the English educational system failed when the time
came to give up traditional educational and social models and redefine the training of workers
as a national imperative. Whilst the country was the workshop of the world in the textile
phase of British industrialisation (Hobsbawm, 1982; p. 111 et seq.) and at the time could use
comparatively simple training schemes, in the second half of the century and in the period
before the First World War it was increasingly difficult for England to maintain its lead as an
industrial power. Contemporaries unanimously remarked that one of the causes of the British
Disease was inadequate education which offered hardly any vocational qualifications that
reflected the requirements of the economy (Wiener, 1982). Two major historical factors can
be blamed for the adaptation crisis in education. First is the traditional limitation of education
for those classes of society whose lot was the working world. These, as productive parts of the
economy, were assigned values in terms of their predestined places in the production process.
Second, this laissez-faire in the evolution of society was not tempered by a professional or
government code which might have moderated the subjugation of qualifying and integrating
new generations to market demand. The tardiness of training progress in England became
increasingly visible in the dichotomy between vocational and general education and in the
governments lack of interest in founding an educational system equipped to meet economic,
social and industrial demands. It is reasonable to believe that social conservatism, economic
complacency and the absence of a renaissance in the teaching profession were the factors
adversely affecting English vocational education. The country placed its faith in workplace
training. Even the typically English institutional scientific education and technical education
had little impact on the training of workers. An example of the failure of relevant
working-class institutions is that of the mechanics institutes, originally founded in the late
18th century (Deissinger, 1992; p. 329 et seq.). From the outset they were intended to offer
educational training to craftsmen and skilled workers by teaching them the scientific
principles of their trades. Their disregard for occupational training and their concentration on
higher training of workers and artisans eventually caused the institutes to drift into general
education. In the face of growing union agitation, skilled artisans felt obliged to distinguish
themselves from the proletariat and to assimilate themselves to the ethical code of tradesmen
and industrial entrepreneurs. The mechanics institutes neither succeeded in opening their
gates to a broad public of unskilled factory workers, nor did they succeed during the
19th century in stabilising or reactivating guild norms such as consolidation of the regulatory
institution of apprenticeship. This was because the worker aristocracy defined itself as an
elite associated with organised vocational training and material advantage. Neither schools nor
business had a global strategy to educate and qualify the working classes.
36
3.6.
Company vocational training at the dawn of the

20th century
Indirect government influence on the form of apprentice training can be seen in the legal
framework provided by the factory and school laws in the second half of the 19th century.
These defined working conditions and hours for young employees as well as general school
attendance rules and the scope of the half-time system of education. The employment of
children was, nevertheless, still common practice at the turn of the century. This was the doing
of the factory acts themselves, since they did not apply to the small concerns run as
sweatshops. Children and young people, particularly in regions and cities with no adequate
schooling facilities, took employment at as early an age as possible to help support their
families. Although the Factory Act of 1901 provided that children under the age of 13 might
not even take part-time employment, this law only covered about one third of children and
young people. In the small businesses in towns and cities child labour remained a feature of
life.
The social reformer Richard H. Tawney ascertained at the end of the century that there was a
knot of vocational training problems which he ascribed to the dichotomy between boy
labourers and boy learners (Tawney, 1909).
According to Tawney, in Liverpool in 1901 only 3.4 % of all 14-year olds received training,
while 55.5 % worked as casual labourers in all manner of occupations (Springhall, 1986;
p. 237). Where there was a tradition of training, its quality was very varied. In the light of
stark differentiation between workers and distinct worker hierarchies, Tawney distinguished
between the groups of common apprentices, premium apprentices and privileged apprentices
in the metal industry. While a tuition fee was necessary for a premium apprenticeship, the
third category involved rotating from one workshop to another and learning all metalworking
techniques. The deregulated nature of apprentice training was not only connected to the
transformed structure of the working world, but was intensified by the restrictive control over
vocational training held by the worker aristocracy. Apprenticeships were no longer to be
seen as a generally valid standard, but instead as trade specific and negotiable. The training
was given according to the principle of following up and improving which involved the
acquisition of journeyman status without a regular structured examination. This basic
requirement to complete training corresponded to the medieval system of time-serving
(Aldcroft, 1992; p. 55 et seq.). Two developments played a role here: the decline of classical
apprenticeship training in skilled professions and the increasing supply of casual labour and
call for untrained hands due to population growth. As ever, the industrial centres of the
northern counties showed the greatest demand for boy labourers. Tawney speaks of
non-educational employment (Tawney, 1909; p. 525), for which young people received no
preparation in primary schools and no real tuition except perhaps rudimentary on-site training.
37
3.7.
English further education schools at the dawn of the

20th century
The expansion of English primary schooling to secondary level took place in England around
the turn of the century under education efficiency premises, due to, in the words of Michael
Sadler, the absolute necessity of imitation of the educational policy of Germany and the
United States (Sadler, 1907; p. 13). This led at the end of the 19th century to the continuation
schools, most of which were evening schools. They were expected to fulfil a dual function: to
extend and elaborate primary education, and to prepare for studies at an institution for
advanced learning in engineering and sciences. Despite this, joining the workforce at an early
age remained the main cause of inadequate basic education. Given these conditions, it was
difficult for a continuation school to establish itself as a valid form of education. Like the
skilled worker institutes, the continuation schools were treated either as a belated form of
primary school or simply as a form of general education, an annex to the mechanics
institutes (Grothe, 1882; p. 64). In 1894, under the Acland Code, the government opened the
evening continuation schools for adult education. From then on, people over the age of 21
could take advantage of these further training institutions. Vocational training was expressly
set apart from this and seen as a separate system governed by concepts such as freedom of
employment and independence of the employer. The 1901 census testifies to the sorry state of
education at the turn of the century. Figures for 12-17 year olds in England and Wales show
that 17.7 % attended a public school, 6 % attended a secondary school (either a grammar
school or a private school) and only 6.9 % attended an evening school (Sadler, 1907; p. 105 et
seq.). Due either to lack of facilities or reluctance to continue schooling alongside
employment, the majority of young people had no place in the English educational system. In
1902 the Balfour Education Act formally separated the non-obligatory and therefore
ineffective evening further training institutions from the primary schools (Metz, 1971; p. 35).
They were thenceforth part of advanced education, like the traditional secondary schools and
the varied institutions which offered technical education. The schools remained
non-compulsory. This situation differed markedly from the German system. Sadler, an acute
observer of tendencies in Germany, noted the conspicuous national interest in education in
German provinces (Higginson, 1990; p. 247) as exemplary and worthy of imitation. Sadler
was a close friend of Georg Kerschensteiner, the father of vocational training. The English
educator admired Kerkensteiners Munich Model, which created further training institutions
that were oriented towards both the needs of the civil state and to the ends of training with a
view to qualifications (Greinert, 1975; p. 80 et seq.). Sadler recognised that the education of
young people beyond elementary school was not only the fulfilment of sociopolitical
considerations but was also the result of pedagogical and welfare policy.
In 1908, a Scottish educational law decreed the attendance at a continuation school for those
over the age of 14 and stated that it was no longer the duty of parents to guarantee attendance,
but that a school board would take over this responsibility. This one step put Scotland a whole
decade ahead of England in terms of educational development. In 1909 the Acland Committee
was entrusted with the task of estimating the transferable applicability of this law to England
38
and Wales, given conditions prevalent there. The Acland Report also made reference to the
Munich Model: No one has done more to develop a satisfactory system of continuation
schools than the city superintendent of education in Munich, Dr. Kerschensteiner (quoted by
Metz, 1971; pp. 143-144). The fact that England was nonetheless incapable of realising a
school policy that was oriented towards the Scottish model, thereby indirectly drawing on the
German example, is demonstrated by the loose and didactically vague structures of its
continuation schools. It was noted that in Germany, where a system of further training schools
had replaced that of the extended school of the 19th century, the number of uneducated was
conspicuously low, while in London unskilled labourers made up 68 % of the total workforce.
Nonetheless, the attempt in 1918 to introduce compulsory secondary education within the
framework of a new educational bill for the UK was a failure. In 1921 the first 22 of the
compulsory further training schools introduced by law were completed and operating in
London. It became apparent, however, that the Fisher Education Act was scarcely
acknowledged and applied outside the capital. The majority of the schools founded in the
early 1920s closed again after one or two years, not least because employers resented giving
their young employees and trainees time off. Fiscal restrictions of the 1920s helped extinguish
the idea of any public further training school which could not claim rights of seniority over
other forms of schooling.
It is not possible to treat the entire development of English vocational training in the rest of
the 20th century in this article. It is sufficient to say that even the far-reaching Educational
Reform Act of 1944 failed to create impetus enough to instigate nationwide compulsory
further training school attendance. The planned county colleges, which were never actually
founded, (Aldrich, 1992; p. 66), were supposed to assure that young people between 15 and
18 did not entirely fall out of the school system. The Crowther Report referred to this aborted
state intervention in the field of post-elementary education and Englands chronic vocational
training 15 years later with these words: This report is about the education of English boys
and girls aged from 15 to 18. Most of them are not being educated (quoted by Perry, 1976;
p. 139). The political and educational guarantees of the sort provided by German vocational
schools remained alien to the English system. The elements of the German system did not and
still do not correspond to the reference points within the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of the
vocational training and integration problem.
3.8.
Conclusion
Education and vocational training should not, and cannot, be separated from the history of a
country, its social development and its institutions. The same is true of the radical realignment
of educational structures that amount to a systematic approach (Winch, 1998; p. 377;
Deissinger, 2001c). The major differences between German and English development in this
matter are to be seen in societys handling of the apprenticeship issue during the period of
heavy industrialisation. In Germany, craft trade practice was a standardising factor of
professional training (Blankertz, 1969; p. 127) because liberal thought was not as predominant
39
there as in other countries (Stratmann, 1982; p. 183 et seq.; Gonon, 1998; pp. 260-261). This
perpetuated apprenticeship to a master, which in England never played anything more than a
marginal role in the field of vocational training. The vocational training specialist Abraham
furthermore refers to the difference between work-accompanying and school-based
vocational training in Germany as a solution to the vocational training problem due to its
foundations in presumptions which either did not exist in other countries or at least not to the
same extent (Abraham, 1962; pp. 171-172).
Although German and English vocational training face the same challenges, they are of
significantly different character. The English system can be seen as decentralised and
extremely heterogeneous because of the training and qualifying process provided by the
individual businesses involved; this situation persists despite seemingly innovative reform
concepts that the environment particularly tried to impose in the form of state regimentation.
The prevalent pattern was determined by the socioeconomic conditions of the Industrial
Revolution (Deissinger, 1992; 1994; 1999). One of the historical origins of the English
vocational insularity was the intellectual approach sponsored by the tradition of Calvinism and
the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment. Evidence of underdevelopment of social policy (compared
to Germany) can be seen in two main fields. One is the handling of the social question, the
other involves the evolution of state organisation, which differs from the German pattern in
that the outlines of a bureaucratic state were only tentatively formed after half a century of
industrial development (Rohe, 1984; p. 167 et seq. passim).
Englands decision in favour of liberalism also led to the ideological preconditions which
paved the way for the legitimisation of a range of welfare functions in the 19th century. It is,
therefore, appropriate to name economic liberalism and its theoretical treatment of the
production factor labour as a culturally significant feature of English development
(Biernacki, 1995). Its proponents have also left their mark on the Anglo-Saxon vocational
training system due to their essentially ambivalent response to the role of the state. For liberal
thinkers, the states raison dtre is guaranteeing individual rights, but it has no economically
interventionist mandate. In line with such thinking, both forceful ideas and genuine
sociohistorical drives influence the shaping, re-crafting and the reformability of vocational
training. Comparison of the German and the English history of vocational training offers
much evidence to support this conclusion.
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45
4.
Apprentice strikes in British metalworking,

1919-69: attributes and interpretation
Paul Ryan
4.1.
Introduction (2)
An interesting attribute of the modern histories of both apprenticeship and industrial relations
in the UK is the high strike propensity of metalworking apprentices. Between 1910 and 1965,
they launched a series of strikes that ranked alongside adult ones in both magnitude and
frequency, and were conducted for the most part independently of adult ones. Eight of these
apprentice actions were sufficiently extensive, large and protracted to be termed strike
movements, in that they spread from district to district, drew in many thousands of young
people and lasted for several weeks. They were mostly launched in support of demands for
higher pay scales for junior male workers in general, and apprentices in particular.
The phenomenon of the apprentice strike has been largely ignored, both at the time and
subsequently, in research on industrial relations, industrial training and vocational education
alike (3). Interest has been confined largely to social history (4). This paper argues that the
apprentice strikes constituted an important feature of industrial conflict during the period and
exerted a potentially powerful influence on the evolution of industrial apprenticeship.
An apprentice strike is not, however, simple to interpret. At one pole, it may be viewed
sociologically as a manifestation of youth exuberance, part of the long tradition of apprentice
larking about and rioting. At the other, it may be interpreted from an economic standpoint as a
serious interruption of economic activity, imposing damage on both employers and
apprentices themselves. This view is termed here the real damage one.
Continuing with an economic perspective, the very idea of an apprentice strike may be
paradoxical. Any threat by apprentices to strike might be empty, were its prospective damage
confined to the apprentices themselves, in that during a strike they would earn and learn less
while their employers enjoyed a temporary cut in payroll costs. This interpretation here
(2) This paper is a shortened and revised version of the paper presented to the Florence Conference. I would
like to thank: Wolf-Dietrich Greinert, Thomas Deissinger, Georg Hanf, David Lyddon, Alan Macfarlane,
Alan McKinlay, Alastair Reid and Keith Snell for encouragement, comments and suggestions; the
Engineering Employers Federation and the Department for Education and Skills for unpublished
information; and the Modern Records Center (Warwick), the Public Record Office (Kew) and the Mitchell
Library (Glasgow) for help in locating archive materials.
(3) E.g. Knowles (1952), Williams (1957), Cronin (1979), Durcan et al. (1983), Sanderson (1994).
(4) Knox (1984), Croucher (1982), McKinlay (1985, 1986), Fowler (1995). See also Gollan (1937) and
Frow E. and Frow R (1983).
46
termed the empty threat one is clearly compatible with a sociological emphasis on the
youthful letting off of steam.
This paper argues that, given the heterogeneity of British metalworking apprenticeship, both
interpretations have relevance. At the same time, a range of evidence points to apprentice
strikes as having had serious effects on employers, and thereby contributing to a sea change in
apprenticeship-related wage structure, which in turn promoted the decline of apprenticeship
activity. Apprentice strikes contributed also to the further erosion of the distinction, both
de jure and de facto, between apprenticeship and regular employment. The embedding of
apprenticeship in industrial relations that occurred during the period (Ryan, 1999) owed much
to apprentice activism. The casualty was any prospect for apprenticeship to develop into part
of vocational education, as has occurred in much of continental Europe.
4.2.
Patterns
Industrial conflict is measured along three dimensions: number of strikes, number of strikers,
and strike duration. As strike activity varies by time and place in different ways across these
dimensions, all are relevant to the description of apprentice strikes. A fourth dimension, which
has the merit of combining all three, is working days lost, or striker days.
This paper focuses on a specific subset of all strikes: principal (i.e. large) disputes, monthly
published reports of which indicated throughout the period the primary categories of employee
involved (5). An apprentice strike is taken here to be a principal dispute in which the primary
or sole class of employee directly involved was reported as apprentices, or apprentices, boys
and youth (e.g. engineering apprentices for May 1939) (6). The period 1919-70 saw 16 such
disputes in engineering and shipbuilding. Most occurred during three subperiods: the post-war
slump (1921-22), rearmament and war (1937-44), and the 1960s. All appear to have satisfied
the criterion eventually established for a principal dispute, i.e. at least 5 000 working days
lost.
The quantitative importance of apprentice strikes can be gauged from their share of principal
disputes in metalworking as a whole, as shown in Figure 1. In most years apprentice strikes
constituted only a small share of principal disputes, particularly in terms of the number of
disputes. In some years, however, they featured prominently, notably in 1937, 1941, 1952 and
(5) Detailed data on participation in principal disputes are available only from 1925.
(6) All youths, including apprentices, are treated here as employees, despite the formal legal differentiation of
contracts of apprenticeship from those of employment (service). The marginal content of that difference,
both de jure and de facto, became increasingly marginal during the period (Hepple and OHiggins, 1981).
47
1960, when they accounted for at least one-third and as much as nine-tenths of working days
lost (in principal disputes in metalworking) (7).
Table 1 describes the eight of these principal disputes that may be termed strike movements,
in the sense of involving more than one firm, and usually more than one district, and either
continuous or near-continuous strike activity from start to finish (apart from prior token
strikes). An apprentice strike movement occurred on average every seven years during the five
decades. It saw an average of 18 000 youths spend 10 working days each on strike during a
period nearly six weeks long, involving the loss of 180 000 working days.
The apprentice movements mostly started in either the Clyde (Glasgow) or the Manchester
areas and then typically spread to the other one, and often to other districts too. The 1937 and
1960 movements travelled the furthest, taking in Northern Ireland and parts of the Midlands
(Coventry) and the South (London), as well as the traditional industrial heartlands of central
Scotland and northern England. The participants in these movements were mostly male
manual (trade) apprentices. Other categories of young worker, including labourers, trainees,
non-manual apprentices and females, participated on several occasions, but only as small
minorities (8).
Apprentice strike movements were no novelty at the start of the period. In 1912, 15 000
apprentices had struck, for an average of 18 working days each, in pursuit of a wage rise to
compensate them for the recent introduction of national insurance contributions (Knox, 1984).
But the phenomenon did not outlast the 1960s, and the timing of its extinction potentially
informs the problem of its interpretation (Section 4.5., below).
The evidence points to engineering and shipbuilding apprentices as a moderately strike-prone
employee category. Their propensity to industrial action has been largely forgotten, even
though the strike-proneness of metalworking as a whole has been widely recognised.
4.3.
Context, attributes and strike demands
The key attributes of metalworking apprenticeship during the period from an industrial
relations perspective were the weakness of the distinction, both legal and practical, between
apprenticeship and regular employment, the weakness of the contribution made by
apprenticeship to vocational education, the complexity of the relationship between apprentices
and trade unions, and the increasing integration of apprenticeship into industrial relations.
(7) All apprentice strikes involved the engineering industry, and most shipbuilding as well. Metal manufacture
was also affected in 1952, but construction, which also employed many apprentices and young workers,
appears never to have been involved.
(8) Manual male apprentices accounted for 97 % of the 5 470 young workers who participated in the 1952
movement in federated Scottish engineering firms (EEF case A(7)2).
48
4.3.1.
Context
By 1919 the engineering and shipbuilding industries had already adopted industry-wide
(national) collective regulation of employment relations, involving an employers federation
(the Engineering and the Shipbuilding Employers Federations, respectively) and national trade
unions and their federations (notably the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the
FEST/CSEU respectively). Collective organisation was, however, voluntary, and far from
comprehensive on both sides of the industry (9).
Although wage rates continued to vary by district, by 1919 changes were negotiated at sectoral
level in both industries. Moreover, sector-wide procedure agreements in principle channelled
disputed issues through a series of joint conferences, from works (factory) level through
district level to national level. Only if the negotiators failed to agree at all levels did either side
become formally free to take industrial action (Sharp, 1950).
Trade unions were entitled to request special conferences at national level in order to raise
issues of industry-wide import. Between the wars the engineering unions attempted frequently
to do just that for apprentices, as the latter remained outside procedure: employer
representatives insisted that apprentices (and other youths) be exclusively their own charge,
within a bilateral paternalistic relationship. The implication was the rejection of third party
intervention by trade unions. The unions sought repeatedly the right to negotiate for young
workers, a claim that the EEF refused even to discuss until forced by the 1937 apprentice
strike movement to concede a procedure agreement for non-indentured junior manual males.
That agreement was extended to all apprentices only in 1964, again following an apprentice
strike.
By then, however, the industry-wide disputes procedures had been weakened. The processing
of local issues by procedure had been weakened during the First World War by the growth
of factory-based shop steward organisation, workplace bargaining and unofficial strikes.
Those developments were reversed by the unions defeats in two sector-wide lockouts in
1922-23, and by the prolonged interwar slump. From the mid-1930s, however, workplace
activism revived, often in defiance of both procedure and union officials. By the 1960s, the
engineering industry could plausibly be depicted as undermining formal, industry-wide
regulation by informal workplace bargaining. The principal symptoms were unofficial strikes,
conducted outside formal procedure, and wage drift, with earnings rising more rapidly than
minimum wage rates, as a result of local supplements (10).
(9) Union membership density in the metal trades, which included iron and steel production, exceeded 50 % in
1920 but fell back to less than 25 % by 1932 and fluctuated between 50 and 60 % during 1945-70 (Bain and
Price, 1980; p. 50). Membership density (by establishment) amongst engineering employers was estimated
by Marsh (1965; p. 248) at 80 % among large firms (2 000 plus employees) but less than 10 % among small
ones (less than 100 employees).
(10) Donovan (1968), Hinton (1973), Croucher (1982).
49
4.3.2.
Attributes
Apprentice strikes dovetailed in key ways with the wider industrial relations context. All were
unofficial and unconstitutional, i.e. they were launched without official trade union approval
(and sometimes in defiance of official instruction) and without prior recourse to any sectoral
disputes procedure (though junior workers were not covered by the latter until the victory of
the 1937 movement).
The disputes were notable for their timing, extent and duration. The 1941 and 1944 strikes
breached, at two critical junctures in the war effort, the legal prohibition of industrial action
and the associated requirement for compulsory arbitration (Croucher, 1982). More generally,
as Figure 4.1 suggests, the timing of apprentice actions during the period was statistically
unrelated to its adult counterpart. As to extent, the major apprentice strikes were
multi-employer and multi-district (albeit not strictly industry-wide). Standard all-employee,
multi-employer disputes involving adult employees were usually launched from the top by
national officials, but apprentice movements were promoted from the bottom by ad hoc
apprentice strike committees. The strikes continued for a matter of weeks, not just hours or
days, although individual apprentices and factories were often involved for only hours or days.
The unofficial status of apprentice strikes partly reflected the weakness of the links between
unions and young workers, most of whom were not members of unions, at least at the start of
the dispute. Some youth disputes were, however, sanctioned retrospectively by unions
executive committees, if only de facto, through the decision to grant or withhold strike
benefit, as by the AEU in 1937, 1952 and 1960.
Apprentice strikes showed a pattern of limited and volatile participation, with a high share of
non-strikers and a high turnover of strikers during the dispute. A local employers association
reported during the 1952 strike that everything is very fluid and no sooner do you get a
number of lads back in one factory than another set of lads go on strike somewhere else (11).
Such conditions appear to have been the norm. Fully one-third (32.7 %) of the 7 900 trade
apprentices in federated engineering firms in Scotland took no part in the 1952 strike (12). In
the eight strike movements during the period, the average participant was out on strike
(allowing for non-working days) for only one-third of the overall duration of the movement
(Table 1, columns 6 and 9).
Similarly, most of the apprentice organisations formed to promote and conduct the strike
proved ad hoc, localised and ephemeral. At the same time, the organisational achievements
during 1937-42 of the Clyde Apprentices Committee were impressive. When union premises
were not made available, meetings were organised variously at factory gates, on bombsites
and in public parks, and strike headquarters established in the premises of Trades Councils, of
other unions and of the Labour Party, and even (in Manchester in 1960) in a coffee house.
(11) Manchester Engineering Employers Association letter to EEF, 24.3.1952 (EEF case A(7) 275).
(12) EEF case A(7)2.
50
Mass meetings of strikers, often held in public parks or on wasteland, and closely monitored
by the police, played an influential part.
The strike was typically spread from district to district by apprentices themselves, travelling
on foot, by bicycle, by motorbike, and even, in 1964, by aeroplane. The familiar tactics of
mass picketing and the abuse of non-strikers but rarely physical violence were widely used
to increase participation.
Finally, apprentice strike movements were promoted to some extent by left-wing politics. The
importance of the contribution of young Communists to the strikes of 1937-44 is indicated by
the political affiliations of many apprentice leaders (Fishman, 1995). The left-wing
contribution was not always helpful to the cause, however. The weakness of the 1964 strike,
as reflected in limited participation in Manchester and a weak response on the Clyde, reflected
in-fighting between rival Communist-led and Trotskyite-led strike committees (13).
4.3.3.
Strike demands
The primary demand of apprentice strikers throughout the period was higher pay, for junior
males in general, and apprentices in particular. Only in the 1944 anti-conscription dispute did
pay fail to feature. Despite widespread criticism of training quality, improved training
remained a secondary issue.
The dominance of pay amongst apprentice demands increased during the period. The three
post-war movements pursued claims that involved pay only, whereas those of 1937, 1939 and
1941 had focused on a wider set of issues, as expressed by the Apprentices Charter
formulated by the Clyde strike committee in 1937. The Charter called not only for higher pay
and district-wide age-wage minimum pay scales, but also for apprentice rights to both part
time technical education (under day release) and union representation, and for a reasonable
proportion of apprentices to journeymen (adult craftworkers). Although demands for
improved training featured in all three strikes, they disappeared thereafter, as also in union
claims on behalf of apprentices in national bargaining.
In the case of unions, the bias towards pay only claims for apprentices may have reflected
the difficulty of enforcing such clauses in collective agreements, given the difficulty of
monitoring work-based training (Ryan, 1994; 1999). For apprentices, interest in training
content did not actually vanish after the war. The AEUs annual Youth Conference regularly
passed at least one resolution calling for more or better apprentice training. Unofficial
apprentice organisations also showed some interest; a youth right to paid day release for
technical education featured in the revised version of the Apprentice Charter proposed by a
National Apprentices Conference in Glasgow in 1952 (CAYC, 1952).
(13) EEF case Z65/68 (52); Clyde Shipbuilders Association case TD 241/12/359.
51
Nevertheless, apprentice strike leaders set their sights primarily or only on higher relative
pay (14). Their choice of priority may have a simpler explanation than in the case of national
union claims. Taking a short-term perspective, apprentices may have preferred more pay
now to more skill now and (maybe) more pay later (15).
4.4.
Interpretation
How seriously should apprentice strikes be taken? Like student strikes, they may have simply
represented outbursts of frustration, energy or political activism that caused employers much
like educational institutions faced by student strikes inconvenience but no serious damage.
In that case, apprentice actions would be of interest for the sociology of youth, but should be
confined to the footnotes in histories of both industrial relations and vocational training.
Alternatively, apprentice strikes may have imposed serious costs on both parties, and should
accordingly feature in mainstream histories of both fields. Economic theory, the attributes of
apprentice disputes, and training practices all potentially inform the choice between the
alternative interpretations.
4.4.1.
Economics of bargaining and training
The possibility that apprentice strikes had little economic effect is at first glance consistent
with both bargaining theory and the economics of apprenticeship. The central issue in
bargaining theory is the damage that workers can effectively threaten to impose on their
employers, relative to the losses they can expect to suffer themselves in the event of a dispute
(Muthoo, 1999). In work-based training for skills that are valued by other employers beside
the one providing the training, economic theory predicts that the employer who provides
training will bear part of its cost by paying trainees more than the value of their net output
during training (Stevens, 1994a; Acemoglu and Pischke, 1999). An apprentice strike then
increases the employers profit, in the short-term at least, as it reduces apprentice payroll costs
by more than the value of apprentices net output. It also makes apprentices worse off, as a
result of loss of earnings while on strike. Under such conditions, the strike threat is empty.
The employer should simply shrug it off, and even respond with a more credible threat to
fire any apprentices who go on strike (16).
(14) Other apprentice demands concerned conscription, representation rights and the transition to skilled status,
all of which proved marginal and ephemeral.
(15) Thus James Hunter, Secretary of the Clyde Apprentices Committee in 1937, told the Court of Inquiry into
the 1941 strike that the strikers had indeed wanted improved training, but the question of training was not
absolutely washed out, but when the committee came to the conclusion that the primary demand of the
apprentices was the question of a wage increase, we concentrated on that (PRO file LAB 10/509).
(16) These results apply when competition for skilled labour is imperfect (oligopsonistic). Under perfect
competition (general skills), the employer incurs no training costs (Becker, 1974) and therefore cannot be
damaged by an apprentice strike, apart from any costs of rescheduling work during the dispute.
52
Apprenticeship training may, however, operate differently. If employers possess market

(oligopsony) power over apprentices rather than over skilled employees, they can pay their
apprentices less than their net marginal product during training. One way to do so is to pay
low wages and provide little training, e.g. by offering no off-the-job instruction and restricting
on-the-job training to specialised semi-skilled production tasks. The employer then exploits
the apprentice rather than investing in his or her skills.
Under such conditions, an apprentice strike threat is potentially serious. An apprentice strike
now involves not only lower output, depending on the ease of replacing youth by adult labour,
but also lower profits: even were it easy to replace apprentice strikers by adult workers, the
latter would be more expensive, even for given output. An apprentice strike then damages the
employer (17).
Economic theory does not indicate whether the empty threat or the real damage
interpretation of an apprentice strike is the more appropriate, but it does establish the
conditions under which each is potentially relevant. Evidence can therefore be sought from the
attributes of both apprentice strikes and training programmes.
4.4.2.
Apprentice traditions
Some attributes of apprentice actions point toward the empty threat interpretation. First,
there is the potential link to the apprentice traditions of licensed absence from work,
skylarking and riotous behaviour in medieval and early modern Britain (Lane, 1996). Under
industrial apprenticeship these traditions appear to have converged on the Shrove Tuesday
(Mardi Gras) holiday (18). Thus, as late as 1950 apprentices in a large modern factory in
Oldham were allowed to leave work at 10 a.m. in order to spend the rest of the day as they
wished without loss of pay. They were actively encouraged to leave work by ritual teasing and
blacking by adult workers of any apprentice who proved slow off the mark. Employers had
long tried to suppress such practices, and had enjoyed some success during the war, but the
resilience of these traditions is suggested by the Oldham case (19).
Second, the timing of apprentice strikes is suggestive. Five of the eight actions started within
six weeks of Shrove Tuesday (20). The sample is small, but the marked seasonality of youth
actions may reflect the influence of tradition. Alternatively, it may simply be that of pent-up
hibernal youth energy.
(17) The potential sources of oligopsony power over trainee labour include involuntary unemployment, employer
collusion, imperfect apprentice information about training content, and low rates of collective organisation
and bargaining coverage (Ryan, 1994; Malcomson et al., 2000).
(18) The day was usually kept as a holiday; games of football were common, together with throwing at cocks,
and all sorts of horseplay took place in schools, universities and among apprentices (EB, 1970).
(19) PRO file PIN 62/348.
(20) Two of other three strikes were prompted by an external shock: postwar wage cuts (1921), military
conscription (1939). One left-wing faction attempted to postpone the autumn 1964 strike until April 1965.
53
Third, apprentice strikes were often marked by youthful exuberance. Jimmy Reid, Secretary of
the Clyde Apprentices Committee during the 1952 strike, later recalled that the apprentices
had organised all sorts of fantastic stunts (21). The 1960 strike was spread in Manchester by a
700-strong apprentice procession, marching around the district, singing and shouting,
following the storming of the gates and the apprentice school at the Metropolitan-Vickers
factory (22).
Though much more needs to be known about the links between apprentice strikes and
apprenticeship traditions, these attributes favour the empty threat interpretation, in which the
strikes should have had little or no economic impact.
4.4.3.
Training attributes
The other attributes of the strikes and apprenticeship, point mostly towards the real damage
interpretation. The list starts with the attributes of apprentice training itself.
Training for craft and technician occupations in metalworking depended throughout the period
primarily on apprenticeship. The content of apprenticeship varied by time and place. Legally,
it involved a fixed-term contract under which the employer undertook to teach the relevant
trade, provide continuous employment and pay a training wage, the apprentice to serve
faithfully, protect trade secrets, etc. In practice, however, it typically involved only an
informal verbal contract, and not a written contract or an indenture. Various attributes point
towards a low average quality of training. Training practices were mostly limited to informal
on-the-job training in practical skills: only a minority of apprentices received technical
instruction, even after 1945 (23). In interwar engineering, the exposure of apprentices to layoff
in downswings was similar to that of skilled adults; apprentices actually outnumbered
journeymen (skilled craftworkers) in some districts; and apprentices were commonly laid off
on completion at age 21, when they became more or less entitled to adult pay rates. As late
as the 1960s, more than two-fifths of engineering apprentices worked under
payment-by-results, paid at piece prices lower than those received by adults. Some employers
did sponsor all-round training, and even include technical education, but the practice had not
become widespread, despite the post-war recommendations made by the EEF and the SEF to
member firms to provide day release to all apprentices less than 18 years old (24).
Under such conditions, it was not surprising that employers were regularly criticised by
apprentices, trade unions, educators, public commentators and even some employers
(21) EEF case A(7) 275.

(22) Apprentices storm works: singing 700 hold up traffic, Manchester Evening News, 29.4.60.
(23) In 1925, only 21 % of employers gave their apprentices time off for technical education and only 2 % had a
works training centre or employed specialised instructors to train apprentices (Ministry of Labour, 1928;
Vol. 6, p. 38 et seq.). See also Williams (1957), Liepmann (1960) and Sanderson (1994).
(24) EEF cases A(7)330, A(12)36, Z67(590); Gollan (1937), Elbaum (1989), Ryan (1986, 1999), Sanderson
(1994), Hart (2001).
54
themselves for using apprentices as cheap labour, at the expense of their vocational
preparation (25). Nevertheless, government did little about apprentice training until the end of
the period. Pre-1939 Governments largely ignored the issue. Wartime and post-war
Governments showed more concern, but opted for collective self-regulation by joint bodies of
employer and employee representatives. Poor results led to the creation from 1964 onwards of
the Industrial Training Boards, empowered to tax all employers of skilled labour and to
subsidise those who provided training, but their effects started to come through only at the end
of the period (Senker, 1991; Marsden and Ryan, 1991).
Concerning pay, apprentice wage rates were, until 1937, determined locally and unilaterally
by employers. Consistent with the oligopsony interpretation (above), in both sectors local
employers associations recommended maximum apprentice wage scales, specified as
percentages of the locally negotiated minimum wage rate for skilled workers. The maximum
rates payable under those scales were low: in the five largest local associations in engineering
in 1936, 20 % of the adult craft rate at age 16, rising to only 45 % at age 20 (typically the first
and last years of apprenticeship respectively). During the interwar years many firms paid their
apprentices even less (26).
During the period, therefore, apprenticeship training was sufficiently heterogeneous to contain
pay and training practices compatible with both the empty threat and the real damage
interpretations of an apprentice strike. The situation of the majority of apprentices was,
however, more consistent with the latter than with the former.
4.4.4.
Effects on and reactions of employers
Systematic evidence is not available concerning the effects of apprentice strikes on output and
profits, and what evidence there is proves mixed.
In some cases, little damage appears to have been done, particularly in factories at which only
a minority of apprentices participated, or the action lasted only a few hours or days, or part of
the time lost by strikers involved day release spent at technical colleges. Limited damage is
also suggested by the tendency of some employers to describe apprentice strikers in paternal,
tolerant and even affectionate terms, as in 1921 when two Clyde shipbuilding firms that had
had a large number of apprentices on strike reported that with the exception of a few lads
all had accepted the wage cuts that had triggered the strike and returned to work (27). A light
touch can also be seen in the informal meeting and sing-song in the canteen with which the
factory manager at Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester persuaded a column of 1 200
(25) Employers use of apprenticeship for cheap labour suggests a strategic preference for the intensification and
cheapening of labour within existing methods of production rather for the production of high quality
products by highly skilled labour (Zeitlin, 1983; 1990; Gospel, 1992).
(26) Surveys of members by the Clyde Shipbuilders Association showed that in both 1924 and 1933 a large
majority of firms were paying below the maximum rates (CSA file TD 241/12/231).
(27) NWETEA Circular Letter 21-408, 11.10.1921.
55
protesting apprentices to stay in during the 1937 strike, and even in the management decision
at a Birkenhead factory in 1952 to turn the fire hoses onto an apprentice meeting (28). Such
features point more to the empty threat than to the real damage interpretation of apprentice
actions.
Nevertheless, damage could be caused and often was. The leading instances are the 1941
and 1944 strikes, which held up urgent war production. The Government set up a Court of
Inquiry to help settle the 1941 dispute because essential government work was delayed by
these stoppages (29). The services of 18-20 year old apprentices were then of particular value,
given that many were required to train and supervise the female dilutee workers on whom the
expansion of war-related output depended. Less dramatic but still marked effects were also
visible in some peacetime strikes. In both 1939 and 1952, e.g. press reports suggested growing
effects on output as the strike proceeded (30).
The scale of the damage depended partly on the reactions of adult workers. Just as the effects
of an adult dispute could be offset by the use of non-striking apprentices (31), so during an
apprentice strike employers might seek to use adult employees to compensate for the loss of
apprentice labour (32). Adult workers might, however, resist and even help the striking
apprentices. Adults options when it came to sympathy action included the blacking of
apprentice work, i.e. refusal to complete work that had been started by apprentices or would
normally be done by them, as widely reported in Glasgow in 1952, e.g. Adult employees
might also boycott apprentices who refused to go on strike, or even put pressure on them to go
out, as in Sheffield in 1960. Finally, they might, themselves, strike in support of the
apprentices, as on the Clyde in 1937 and 1952.
The extent and effects of sympathetic action by adults are difficult to gauge. The EEF received
from its local associations many reports of blacking at factory level, some of it encouraged by
trade unionists, both shop stewards and full-time officials, but the representativeness of those
reports is not clear. Sympathy strikes by adults were rare, brief, and less than solid, as notably
in the case of the one day strike on the Clyde in April 1937, in which only one half of adult
employees participated (33). A strike by 600 adults at two Glasgow firms in 1952, called in
(28) Leeson (1973; p. 159), Frow E. and Frow R. (1983).

(29) Ministry of Labour Gazette, June 1941, p. 117; PRO file LAB 10/138.
(30) Manchester Evening News, 3.6.1939, 20.3.1952.
(31) Non-striking apprentices and foremen had helped employers to win the 1922 lockout in the engineering
industry (Ryan, 1986).
(32) Knox (1984, p. 32) concluded from an earlier (1912) failed apprentice strike movement that apprentices
had only irritational value as disrupters as long as the adult workers remained at their benches.
(33) Half (49.8 %) of the 54 739 adult manual males employed by members of the Glasgow district engineering
and shipbuilding employers associations participated in the 16 April 1937 sympathy strike (Minute Books,
North West Engineering Trades Employers Association, 21.4.1937, and Clyde Shipbuilders Association,
22.4.1937).
56
response to the suspension of apprentice participants in the initial token strike, did shut down
one of the firms (34).
The effects of apprentice strikes depended also on the employers own reactions. Although
firms tended to dismiss apprentice strike threats, once a strike movement got under way most
employers proceeded cautiously, fearful of extending it, particularly by provoking sympathy
action by adults. Employers associations typically suggested to members undergoing an
apprentice strike that they refuse in principle to negotiate with any unofficial strike committee,
and also with union officials until a complete return to work had taken place. But they also
advised firms to avoid any exemplary punishment of apprentice strikers. In 1960 the EEF
advised members to write to apprentices and parents to remind them that participation in the
strike is a breach of the Apprenticeship Agreement, rendering the Agreement liable to
termination. Beyond making that vague threat, firms were advised only to refuse to pay
strikers for time spent at college on day release during the dispute, and to extend periods of
service to reflect time lost while on strike (35). In some strikes, including that on the Clyde in
1960, firms were explicitly urged not to allocate apprentice work to adult employees and not
to discipline apprentices when they returned to work (36).
Some employers ignored their associations advice, notably by taking the hard line expected
under the empty threat interpretation and suspending or firing their striking apprentices. In
Manchester in 1952, R. Broadbent & Co. sacked the seven of its eight apprentices who had
joined the strike. Such reactions tended to backfire, in contradiction to the empty threat
scenario. In the face of the Broadbent firings, the local apprentice strike committee refused to
recommend a general return to work until the firm had reinstated all seven strikers. The firm
climbed down one week later, and the strike committee voted within 24 hours to end the
strike (37). Similarly, in 1960, the suspension by some Clydeside firms of apprentices who had
participated in the initial token strike had, within three days, precipitated an estimated
90 %-solid indefinite strike across the district (38).
The efforts of employer representatives to secure a return to work were usually focused on
union officials, whom they typically pressed urgently, at both national and district levels, to
encourage or order such a move. Such exhortation, taken early and, on that occasion,
welcomed by district officials, helped hamper the spread of the 1964 strike from Manchester
to Glasgow (39).
In sum, the evidence suggests widespread employer concern over the implications of
apprentice strikes for output and profits, particularly when the dispute proved prolonged,
(34) Evening Citizen, 8.2.1952
(35) Circular Letter 119, 9.5.1960 (EEF case A(7) 330).
(36) CSA, Circular Letters, 1960, #60-156.
(37) Manchester Evening News, 19.3, 21.3, 27.3.1952.
(38) NWETEA letters to EEF, 21.4, 24.4.1960 (EEF case A(7)330).
(39) EEF, Circular Letters, 1964 (#253,254) and 1965 (#25); CSA case file TD 241/12/359.
57
when adult workers were drawn in, and in wartime. In other cases, employers showed only
limited concern over the actions and antics of apprentice strikers. Pending more evidence on
the issue, a provisional conclusion might be that the real damage interpretation has
considerable relevance to apprentice strikes as a whole, even if the damage done to most
employers was limited by partial and volatile apprentice participation and the reassignment of
apprentice work to adults.
4.4.5.
Effects on pay structure
A final pointer towards the real damage interpretation of apprentice strikes is evidence that
most of them achieved their objectives, at least in part. Although all eight movements ended
with a return to work whether coordinated by the strike committee or simply as a result of
the decisions of individual strikers on the same conditions, district or national, as before the
start of the strike, that did not necessarily indicate failure. The four largest strikes, those of
1937, 1941, 1952 and 1960, saw work resumed on the understanding, conveyed to the
apprentices by union officials, that employers would soon thereafter resume stalled national
negotiations with the unions on their claim for higher apprentice pay (40).
The effects of apprentice strikes, with their orientation towards increased pay, should
therefore be visible in changes in apprentice pay structures. As Figure 4.2 shows, after the
mid-1930s, seven increases in age-wage scales more than doubled the percentage rates
payable at all ages: e.g. the rate for an 18 year old apprentice rose from only 30 % of that of a
skilled adult in 1937 to 67.5 % by 1970. An apprentice strike movement, combined with
national negotiations by trade unions, preceded most of these increases in relative pay rates.
The correlation between apprentice militancy and increased relative pay is far from perfect.
The strikes of 1939 and 1944 failed to elicit any concessions. Nor can the scale increases of
1943 and 1970 plausibly be attributed to any prior apprentice action. However, the scale
increases that followed five strikes those of 1937, 1941, 1952, 1960 and 1964 can be
partly attributed to apprentice activism.
4.5.
Conclusion
A neglected aspect of the histories of industrial relations and vocational training in the UK is
the high strike propensity of engineering and shipbuilding apprentices. During the five
decades considered here, apprentices undertook eight strike movements, drawing thousands of
young males into conflict with many employers in a variety of districts for weeks at a time.
(40) The 1939 and 1944 strikes both failed partly because they were directed against conscription-related
Government decisions, taken under near-war and war conditions respectively.
58
The interpretation of these strike movements is not straightforward. From one perspective
termed here the empty threat interpretation they continued a historical tradition of youthful
exuberance and licensed misbehaviour but lacked economic implications. From that
standpoint the strikes are of interest for historical sociology, but not for industrial relations,
economics or vocational education. From the alternative standpoint termed here the real
damage view the disputes represented serious industrial conflict, with implications for
industrial relations, industrial training and education alike.
The heterogeneity of circumstances and practices in metalworking apprenticeship during the
period means that support can be found for both interpretations. At the same time, various
strands in the evidence on training practices, effects on production, employer responses, and
effects on pay structure suggest that the strikes involved real conflicts of interest, and often
caused real damage to employers. A final consideration is the disappearance of apprentice
strikes after the 1960s, which suggests that, once the engineering training boards (ITBs) had
raised training standards, the apprentice strike threat had finally become an empty gesture.
The wider implications of apprentice strikes lie outside the scope of this paper, but some can
be noted in closing. The cumulatively large increase in age-wage scale rates to which they
contributed removed from apprenticeship its traditional stigma as cheap labour. They also
helped to destroy the self-serving sham that was the employers insistence on its unilateral
responsibility for the apprentice. Their implications for vocational training were less direct but
less favourable. The upward trend age-wage scales increased the relative payroll cost of
apprenticeship, creating an incentive to employers to shrink their apprenticeship programmes,
thereby contributing to the decline of apprenticeship (41).
The importance of apprentice activism was recognised obliquely, as its heyday came to an
end, by a union leader who generally showed it little sympathy. Sir William Carron, AEU
President, remarked in negotiations with the EEF in 1963 over the unions renewed claim for
higher apprentice pay scales that:
it might be a coincidence, or it might not be a coincidence, but on each and every
occasion, so far as we can recall, when apprentices have felt themselves impelled to take this
course, something has been done about the problem which was not done prior to this kind of
thing happening (42).
His allusive terminology may well have reflected the discomfort that apprentice activism
induced on both sides of the negotiating table, but his tribute to apprentice activism rang true.
(41) Lindley (1975), Marsden and Ryan (1991), Stevens (1994b), Gospel (1995), Ryan (2001), Ryan and Unwin
(2001).
(42) EEF, Minutes of Central and Special Conferences, 31.10.1963.
59
Annex: data sources
Figure 4.1: Youth shares of strike activity, principal disputes only, UK engineering and
shipbuilding, 1919-69 (%)
1 0 0 .0
9 0 .0
8 0 .0
7 0 .0
6 0 .0
5 0 .0
4 0 .0
3 0 .0
2 0 .0
1 0 .0
Source: Ministry of Labour Gazette, monthly reports (1919-24) and annual summaries (1925-70).
Principal disputes in engineering and shipbuilding by category of:

workpeople involved (apprentices, boys and youths; others):
number of strikes;
number of strikers;
working days lost.
60
1969
d a y s lo s t
str ike r s
s tr ike s
1967
1965
1963
1961
1957
d a y s lo st
1959
1955
1953
1951
1947
str ik e r s
1949
1945
1941
1943
1937
1939
1933
1929
1935
str ik e s
1931
1927
1923
1925
1919
1921
0 .0
Figure 4.2: Attributes of apprentice strike movements, UK, 1919-69

(1)
(2)
(3)
Year
Period
Sectors
(day.
month)
(4)
(5)
Districts involved (g)
(6)
Duration
(7)
No of
strikers
Outbreak
Participation
(calendar
days) (e)
(000)
(8)
Working
days lost
Total
(000)
(9)
p.c. (f)
1921
27.6-4.7;28.912.10
E, S
Manchester Clyde
Manchester Clyde
33
6.5
72 (a)
11 (a)
1937
27.3-4.5; (b)
6.930.10
E, S
Clyde Manchester
Central Scotland, N. Ire,

N. England, Coventry, London
94
32.5
406
12
1939
18.5-3.6
Clyde
16
2.2
19
1941
28.2-5.4
E, S
Clyde
37
25.1
220
1944
28.312.4
E, S
NE Coast (Tyne)
NE Coast Clyde, Hudd
16
17.0
150
1952
10.32.4 (c)
E, S, M
Clyde
24
16.4
194
12
1960
20.4-16.5 (c)
E, S
Clyde
Scotland N. England, N. Ire

Scotland, N. Ire, N. England,
Coventry London
27
36.9
347
1964
2.11 -25.11(c)
Manchester
23
6.0
26
34
17.8
179
10
Clyde (only)
Central Scotland, N. Ire,
Manchester
N. England Clyde
Mean (d)
NB: Sectors: E, engineering; S, shipbuilding; M, metal manufacture. Where sources differ, Ministry of Labour estimates are preferred.
Source: Annex; Croucher (1982); EEF and SEF archived case files
(a)
average time on strike assumed to be 25.7 % of dispute duration (unweighted average of 1937-64 strikes)
(b)
excludes one day sympathy strike by adults on Clydeside
(c)
excludes prior token strikes lasting one day or less
(d)
unweighted arithmetic average
(e)
from col (2)
(f)
(8)/(7)
(g)
Clyde: Glasgow and west central Scotland; Central Scotland: same, plus Edinburgh and Dundee; Scotland: same, plus Aberdeen; N. England: South Lancashire and South Yorkshire; N. Ire: Belfast.
61
% Craft wage rate
Figure 4.3: Apprentice age-wage scale rates, UK engineering (EEF), 1935-71

100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20 yrs
19 yrs
18 yrs
17 yrs
16 yrs
20.0
10.0
0.0
1935
1940
1945
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
Source: Ministry of Labour and National Service, Time Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour, annual.
Wage rates of apprentices and craft workers.

Craft rates: weekly minimum consolidated time rates for fitters, except foundry workers,
April: 1951-67, average of district rates for large districts (Manchester, Birmingham, etc.);
1967- : minimum national rate.
Age-wage scale rates by age: apprentice fitters, except foundry in EEF member firms,
April: 1935-41, estimated from locally recommended apprentice maximum rates in the five
EEF Associations employing the most apprentices (NE Coast, North West [Glasgow],
Manchester, Birmingham and London); 1941-50, scale rates in 1941 and 1943 EEF/AEU
wage agreements; 1951- : age-wage scales, mechanical engineering.
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65
5.
Vocational training in French schools: the

fragile State-employer alliance
Vincent Troger
A feature of the system of vocational training in France today is the extent to which that
training is provided in State school and colleges. Two types of vocational education and
training (VET) provision the lyces professionnels (vocational lyces) and the technological
streams of the general lyces are the destination for almost half of the young people in
France coming to the end of compulsory schooling: one million go on to these options,
compared with a million going on to the academic streams within the lyces. In contrast,
relatively few youngsters of the same age approximately 300 000 are accepted for
apprenticeship training in the workplace.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the thinking that led to this constellation, starting at
the end of the 19th century. The first part outlines the main trends in the history of vocational
training since the French Revolution up to the major reforms of the 1960s. The second is a
more detailed analysis of what has happened since then.
This brief analysis shows that the system of vocational training of young people, in the form
specific to France, has been built up only gradually in response to the problems that arose in
similar terms in every industrialised nation. It highlights the decisive role of the special
historic situation in the 1950s and 1960s that led to General De Gaulle coming to power, and
with him, the leaders and elites who brought with them a particularly interventionist and
centralising vision of the role of the State. In this respect, Frances exception to the general
trend was also an exception within Frances own history since World War I.
5.1.
Technical and vocational education from the French

Revolution to the Fifth Republic
The history leading to the contemporary organisation of vocational training for young people
in France starts with the abolition of corporations in other words, guilds in 1791. The
disappearance of this traditional setting for organising apprenticeship training triggered off
what was called a crisis of apprenticeship, one that was to last throughout the 19th century
and up to the First World War. In fact the term described three different situations:
(a) the decline of traditional apprenticeship training in craft trades, in line with the decline of
those trades themselves. This is still a topical issue today: the sectors that have preserved
the traditional apprenticeship arrangement, such as the food trades, hotel and catering and
part of the building industry, still complain about the shortage of apprentices;
66
(b) the deterioration in the working conditions of young people, and sometimes of children,
who were exploited in the industries using manual labour, essentially textiles and mining;
(c) the shortage of skilled labour in the more modern industries, i.e. mechanical engineering
and, from the end of the 19th century, electrical engineering.
The exploitation of child labour and the shortage of skilled manpower were the focus of
concern for the political and economic elites throughout the 19th century. They responded in
two ways: by developing primary education to teach and protect children, and by starting up
technical schools and evening classes. Up to the late 1870s, France was not very different
from other leading industrial countries in this respect. Many evening courses, either private or
provided by philanthropic associations, workplace schools such as those set up by the
Schneider or De Wendel factories, municipal schools (Paris, Le Havre, Lyons, Nantes, etc.)
and schools financed by trade organisations (Besanon), offered technical training at varied
levels. International exhibitions attracted several international congresses on technical
education, especially at the end of the 19th century, providing an opportunity to show how
more or less similar schemes were being introduced in Germany, Great Britain, Belgium,
Russia and even South America. One of the common features of those initiatives was the low
level of involvement of the State and the vital role performed by private and municipal bodies
(Charlot and Figeat, 1985).
But two events were to bring about a lasting change in the status of vocational training for
young people in France in the last quarter of the 19th century.
The first was the arrival of the Republicans in power in 1879. To stabilise what was initially a
fragile regime they put their faith in compulsory schooling, with the aim of educating French
youth in the spirit and values of the Third Republic and counteracting the Catholic churchs
hold over elementary education. But the Republicans had a problem: how to control working
class youngsters, especially boys, once they had come to the end of compulsory schooling at
the age of 13 and up to the age of military service at 18, or until marriage in the case of girls.
Violence among working class youth was not a new issue: from the start of the century
successive governments had been concerned with the problem. They feared that the
youngsters would fall prey to idleness and crime or to revolutionary ideas. Initial vocational
training was thus seen as a way of maintaining order among these young people while meeting
the needs of industry and trade.
This project was to provide a solution to the concerns of some of the employers, those at the
head of the more modern companies. Mechanical and electrical engineering were at the height
of a boom, with the development of the petrol engine and the electric motor and the
consequences for road vehicles, aircraft, the navy and railways. As a result they needed skilled
manpower in domains calling for new and hard-to-find skills. These sectors were also
strategic, since they supplied the armed forces with equipment at a time when the first great
world conflict was looming.
67
Part of the Republican political elite and some of the employers were to form an alliance and
create what historians in the English-speaking world who have studied this question have
called a lobby (43). This was to work towards establishing a vocational training policy with
two objectives (Pelpel and Troger, 2001).
The first was the development of technical schools funded jointly by the State and by local
authorities. The schools selected from among the best pupils in elementary school those
whose social origins meant that they would opt for a short period of training leading straight
to stable occupations. They trained highly skilled workers for industrial concerns, who then
rose rapidly to become foremen or skilled technicians, the best among them acquiring the
status of engineers (Legoux, 1972).
The second objective was to bring in legislation to regulate the training of blue- and
white-collar workers and to ensure that those employers bearing the cost of apprenticeship
would not be at a disadvantage compared to others not making the effort to train their
workers. For example, a diploma attesting occupational skills, the Certificat dAptitude
Professionnelle (CAP), was created in 1919 (Brucy, 1998), theoretical training courses were
made compulsory for apprentices, and in 1925 an apprenticeship tax (44) was levied on
enterprises that did not train apprentices.
The latter initiative was directly inspired by what was happening at the time in some of the
German Lnder, and especially in Alsace-Lorraine, which had reverted to France in 1918.
Overall, this policy continued to be inspired by liberal thinking. The technical schools were
devoted to training an elite of highly skilled workers, while the laws on the CAP and the
apprenticeship tax, which applied to the training of a majority of workers, were essentially in
the nature of incentives. Apprentices were not under an obligation to sit for the CAP, and the
conditions for exemption from the apprenticeship tax were not very stringent. A head of
technical training stated in 1923 that the State saw itself only as the consultant engineer to
private initiative. The same official drew extensively on the German example and developed
a policy of enticement for enterprises and employers association, with the essential aim of
establishing an active partnership with these parties. Before the Second World War, French
policy on vocational training, therefore, had not yet evolved towards a more original model.
Policy on schooling in the Third Republic continued to have only a marginal influence, and
efforts were essentially directed towards encouraging employers to take more responsibility,
by explicit reference to certain German schemes.
The first objective was successfully achieved: by the eve of the Second World War, several
dozen technical schools were catering for nearly 100 000 pupils, a school population almost as
(43) This lobby has been described in particular by two British historians, Roger Fox and George Weisz, (Fox
and Weisz, 1980).
(44) This tax, calculated as a proportion of each enterprises wage bill, is still levied today and represents a not
insignificant source of funding for many vocational and technical education establishments.
68
large as that of the lyces. The second objective, on the other hand, was not attained at the
same time. Very few apprentices enrolled for the vocational courses or sat the CAP.
It was the failure of the second objective that was to lead to the creation of a second type of
vocational school, what are now called lyces professionnels, with the aim of training not
technicians or foremen but shop-floor and clerical workers. During the Second World War,
the Vichy Government had set up training centres to take in unemployed people from the
working classes and inculcate in them a Ptainist ideology. In 1944, these centres were taken
over by the new government and, with the support of the employers in the metallurgical
industry, represented by a powerful employers association, the Union des Industries
Mtallurgiques et Minires, they became public vocational education establishments (Pelpel
and Troger, 2001). This time, there were two factors motivating the agreement between the
State and the employers: post-war manpower shortages, since the generations now arriving in
the labour market reflected the low birth rate in the first half of the century; and the need for
national reconstruction after most of the countrys infrastructure had been destroyed by
bombing.
This agreement also reflected a change in social and economic relationships in French society.
With the benefit of the prestige it had acquired by its active participation in wartime
resistance, the French Communist Party exerted a strong influence at the time. This, combined
with the influence of Keynesian theory on a large section of the new Government elite,
became a justification for State intervention in every sector of social and economic life and
was the reason for the adoption of a planning policy. A model of centralised and State control
of vocational training started to gain ground in French society, turning back to absolutist,
imperial times. Although the concept of the welfare state was spreading throughout Europe at
the time, in educational matters it was to be on a wider scale in France than elsewhere.
From this date on, there were two parallel categories of public-sector technical schools in
France: one providing training for those who would go on to work as middle management in
enterprises, the other training future blue- and white-collar workers.
Up to the 1960s this system worked very well. It provided employers with shop-floor and
clerical workers and with junior managerial staff who could be put to immediate use on
leaving school. This meant that enterprises did not have to fund and organise the training
effort themselves. The system offered students a rapid route to recognised qualifications, at a
time when post-compulsory school education was still not very well developed. A historian
has called the vocational education of the time a lifebelt thrown to the working class.
Technical education or vocational education diplomas had little competition from other
diplomas in the labour market and, because of this, such education was highly regarded
among ordinary people.
69
5.2.
The devaluation of technical and vocational education
In 1959, General De Gaulle returned to power and embarked on a policy of modernisation in

France. From the educational viewpoint, this policy was based on the assumption that there
should be investment in human capital and therefore that the school population should be
proportionately higher. From 1959 to 1975, there was to be a series of reforms pursuing a
twofold objective. The first was to defer the point at which individuals made their final career
choice by raising the school-leaving age for all: the culmination of this objective was the
comprehensive school and a school-leaving age of 16. The second was to expand scientific
and technical education: the scientific baccalaureate became a highly valued secondary
education diploma, there was a proliferation in engineering schools and technical and
vocational education was developed.
It should be pointed out that this policy was implemented in the context of a centralising
concept that reinforced the trends that had already become apparent over the previous years.
Two instruments were typical of this concept, and they differentiated France from other
countries in this field: the school record card and a nomenclature of job levels. The school
record card, first introduced in 1960, required families to choose a school according to where
they lived. The nomenclature of job levels drawn up by the Commissariat Gnral au Plan
the Government economic advisory board for planning in 1965 established a close
correlation between the different levels of school diplomas and the various levels of
qualifications in the labour market, in such a way as to channel the flow of pupils from
secondary, technical and vocational education to meet the requirements of employers. There
was nothing exceptional in the French policy of raising the level of schooling among the
population at the time, since the pattern was the same in every other industrialised country,
but the way in which it was implemented confirms the special nature of the French system,
under which the State constantly strengthened the forms of centralised control and
standardisation.
At first, technical and vocational courses benefited from these reforms, since they expanded to
the point they have reached today, accounting for half of all lyce pupils. But very soon they
also started to suffer from several side effects that were rapidly to transform them into what
came to be regarded as a second-best stream of the French educational system.
The first factor was demographic. With the arrival in the labour market of the baby-boom
generations at a time when few people in the older generations were reaching retirement age,
it automatically became harder for young people to enter the working world from the late
1960s on. Far more people were seeking their first jobs than there were jobs released by
retirements. The slowdown in economic growth following the oil crises of 1973 and 1975
considerably aggravated the problem: the resulting unemployment, combined with the relative
scarcity of jobs created by retirement, made it very difficult for young people to find work.
Simultaneously, another process more closely linked to the development of the school system
was to have adverse effects on technical and vocational education. The proliferation of
70
engineering and commercial colleges and the development of university-level technological

education meant that enterprises and the administration could increasingly look to these
sources for the future managerial staff and senior executives they needed. The effectiveness of
this system, however, had a negative effect on the technical and above all vocational diplomas
acquired in technical education, by making it increasingly difficult for skilled blue- and
white-collar workers to gain access to more senior jobs through internal promotion (45).
Increasingly, middle-ranking or higher-level jobs were being taken directly by graduates from
the engineering and commercial colleges or the universities. When combined with the
automatic effects of population trends, this process gradually created a bottleneck in internal
workplace promotion, in a way creating competition between the internal recruitment market
(promotion) and the external recruitment market (the hiring of young diploma-holders). To
opt for technical and vocational education meant taking the risk of being locked into
lower-ranking social status for the remainder of ones existence.
From the late 1970s, despite the rise in the number of people in technical and vocational
education, this became the second-best stream of schooling (Troger, 1996). As a result,
families systematically tried to avoid the streams that might keep their children down to a
lower-level working status, and a majority rejected guidance suggesting that this direction be
taken, especially vocational education. Youngsters threw themselves into the race for
diplomas, with the obvious multiplying effect. The more diplomas there were, the more each
individual felt that a more advanced diploma should be sought.
Because of this, the intake of vocational education schools now consisted only of pupils who
had reached the school-leaving age but had failed at school, whereas the technological streams
took the pupils who, at the end of their secondary education, had not reached a high enough
standard to continue their general education in the humanities, science or economics. There
were only rare exceptions to this process: the courses preparing young people for careers still
held in regard, such as the hotel and catering trades or applied arts for industry (industrial
design). The situation has changed since the 1950s, when vocational education was relatively
selective and took good or average-level working class pupils: today its intake consists of the
group of youngsters who have encountered setbacks in their general school education.
This changing pattern of recruitment, however, has conflicted with another trend, the changes
in the skills required in the labour market. Since the early 1980s, production of goods and
services has been increasingly influenced by the demand for quality. The organisation of work
is less determined by the material constraints of production, and increasingly by consumer
demand. Commercial and marketing departments now dictate requirements to the production
departments, a situation that is a reversal from 30 years ago. Public-sector services, which are
highly developed in France, refer less to users and more to clients. For shop-floor and
clerical workers and for junior and middle managerial staff this means that they are expected
to have new competences in addition to essential technical skills. They are required to
(45) In 1971, there was a law making it compulsory for employers to fund their employees continuing training.
But surveys have shown that it was mainly the managerial staff who benefited from such training.
71
communicate better, to adapt quickly to new situations, to master elementary computer skills,
to take over responsibility for some of the customer relations work, etc.
Because of this, technical and vocational education has been forced to bring about a minor
internal revolution. It has adapted its teaching methods to these new demands at a time when
the educational standard of their pupils has been in decline. This evolution is evident in two
fields.
The first has been the development of alternance training (Agulhon, 2000). From now on, all
pupils in vocational education and some of the pupils in technical education will spend part of
their period of schooling in work placements, which are taken into account in awarding their
diploma. This applies in particular to a diploma created in 1985, the baccalaurat
professionnel or vocational diploma. It has helped to narrow the gap between the training
delivered in technical and vocational education and apprenticeship training, since apprentices
receive theoretical training as well as working in their enterprise. Serious thought is also being
given to combining this training as often as possible in the same establishments, which might
be called lyces des mtiers (trade lyces).
The second area of change has been the development of thinking on the content of training,
taking into account the changing requirements of employers. What are called job reference
documents have been drawn up together with the representatives of employers and employees
unions, defining the set of competences sought by employers in each trade (Eckert and
Veneau, 2001). These rferentiels demplois are then converted into rferentiels de formation,
or training reference documents that are used as a basis for implementing teachers
educational methods. These references are often criticised for being too detailed, which
sometimes makes them difficult to apply to the letter. However, there is no doubt that the new
approach has breathed fresh life into teaching methods in technical and vocational education
and has helped to bridge the gap between the standard attained by pupils and the level of the
skills they need to acquire.
In conclusion, I would say that technical and vocational education has today become a sort of
safety valve for the French educational system. It takes over half of French youngsters who
have more or less failed in the comprehensive school, and its teachers have displayed
imagination, determination and patience in offering them the training and additional education
that will help them to obtain a diploma and enter the labour market on the best possible terms.
In this, they are rendering service to the employers by relieving them of most of the cost of
training.
Over the past few years, this system has been criticised partly for its cost and partly for its
relative slowness in reacting to the changing demands of the labour market. Today, these
criticisms are muted, first because technical and vocational education has achieved progress in
its practices. Also, the model of apprenticeship, which has developed significantly in certain
sectors in competition with school-based training, has nonetheless reached a certain limit:
most enterprises and the French Administration have not acquired a true training mindset,
unlike what has been happening in Germany. As a result there are often problems with taking
72
on apprentices, as there are with the placements of young people from vocational education.
This is why we now feel we should be moving towards a sort of compromise: initial
vocational education and training will no doubt continue to be provided in the school for a
long time to come, but its practices will tend to move closer to those of apprenticeship,
without making such heavy demands on enterprises as does traditional apprenticeship.
5.3.
Conclusion
The methods of regulating the relationship between training and employment that have been
in force since the early 1960s are probably changing significantly, in a way returning to the
initial situation in the Third Republic. From a model in which the State control over training
itineraries and methods of certification prevailed, the aim being the standardisation of
resources, there is now a gradual return to more flexible forms of regulation. These are
characterised by the diversification of training procedures and certification and by allowing
employers, private initiatives and regional political bodies to perform a greater role. In this
respect, France is undoubtedly coming closer to the approach to these issues adopted in
Europe. Nevertheless French companies unlike their counterparts in Germany have long
grown accustomed to relying on the initiative of the authorities to meet their training needs.
Paradoxically perhaps, the effects on those companies of a return to a more liberal concept of
vocational training as imposed by the European VET objectives will be all the more painful.
References
Agulhon, C. L'enseignement professionnel, quel avenir pour les jeunes? Paris: Editions de
l'Atelier, 1994.
Agulhon, C. L'alternance, une notion polymorphe, des enjeux et des pratiques segmentes.
Revue Franaise de Pdagogie, April-May-June 2000, No 131.
Brucy, G. Histoire des diplmes de lenseignement technique et professionnel (1880-1965).
Ltat, lcole, les enterprises et la certification des comptences. Paris: Belin, 1998.
Brucy, G.; Troger, V. Un sicle de formation professionnelle en France: la parenthse
scolaire? Revue Franaise de Pdagogie, April-May-June 2000, No 131.
Charlot, B.; Figeat, M. Histoire de la formation des ouvriers, 1789-1984. Paris: Minerve,
1985.
Charmasson, T.; Lelorrain, A. M.; Ripa, Y. Lenseignement technique de la Rvolution nos
jours. Paris: INRP-Economica, 1987.
73
Eckert, H.; Veneau, P. Le rapprochement de lcole et de lentreprise en enseignement

technique, sur les limites dune rationalisation volontariste. Revue Franaise de Pdagogie,
April-May-June 2001, No 131.
Fox, R.; Weisz, G. The organization of science and technology in France, 1908-1914.
Cambridge: University Press, 1980.
Legoux, Y. Du compagnon au technicien (lcole Diderot et lvolution des qualifications).
1873-1972. Paris: Technique et vulgarisation, 1972.
Pelpel, P.; Troger, V. Histoire de lenseignement technique. Paris: Le Harmattan, 2001.
Troger, V. Du centre d'apprentissage au lyce professionnel: enjeux et tensions de la
scolarisation de la formation professionnelle depuis 1945. Carrefour de l'ducation, No 2,
July-December 1996.
Troger, V. La formation des enseignants dans lenseignement professionnel depuis 1945: les
contradictions dune pratique pionnire. In Bourdoncle, R.; Demailly, L. (eds). Les
professions de lducation et de la formation. Paris: Septentrion, 1998.
Troger, V. Lidentit perdue des enseignements techniques et professionnels. In Moreau, G.
(ed.) Les patrons, ltat et la formation des jeunes. Paris: La Dispute, 2002.
74
6.
Development of disparate structures of Dutch

and German vocational education
Dietmar Frommberger, Holger Reinisch
Comparing the origins of vocational education and training (VET) gives an overview of the
similarities and differences of the various systems. It also offers the chance to describe the
different structures, to understand their diverse historical backgrounds and to gain insight into
the reasons for these differences between European States. Comparative historical research in
VET has hitherto been neglected, particularly in academic circles; few satisfactory findings
are available. The following exposition, dedicated to filling this gap, draws on research
conducted by the authors, though space restrictions dictate that only a summary sketch of
results obtained in the historical comparison of the two chosen countries may be presented
here. For further reading we recommend the quoted sources. Initially we focus on the
development of vocational education in the Netherlands. The history of German VET can only
be outlined. For further information on this subject we refer readers to the article of Deissinger
in this volume.
6.1.
Historical development of VET in the Netherlands
The outline of developments in initial and continuing training examines the tenets offered in
After the abolition of the guilds in 1798 (Wolthuis, 2001). This is analogous to the thesis that
the diverse organisation of VET, and with it the differentiation between nation-States, was
born of the crisis in vocational training (Stratmann, 1967), i.e. with mercantilism, the fall of
the feudal system and the perceived and/or actual dissolution of the guilds occupational
order.
The final blow to the Dutch Guilds was the French occupation; the Batavian Republic became
the Kingdom of Holland in 1806, and in 1808, a French dpartement under the rule of
Napoleons brother, Louis Bonaparte (Wiskerke, 1938). Although Napoleons Waterloo soon
returned independence to the countries now known as Belgium and the Netherlands, the
structural transformation leading to deregulation of the trades by virtue of the abolition of
their hegemonial institutions was already under way, and a change of policy was not
effected (De Vries, 1984).
A historically reconstructed quest for explanatory indices of nation-specific VET structures
reveals the significance of the intermediary power. While in 19th and 20th century Germany
a corporative body had managed to reassume a policy-making position (Section 6.2),
interventionary powers in other nation-States such as the Netherlands were crushed. The
French suppression of forms of effective intermediation between citizen and State according
to Schriewer (1986), represents the most extreme expression of the pan-European
75
confrontation with the dichotomy between nation-States and traditional, occupational

fraternities. Dutch history is very much akin to French history in this respect.
The lack of implementational power of such interventionary authorities in VET-related policy
has been associated with the development of school-based vocational training. This presumes
that the existence of these interventionary powers elsewhere offered conditions propitious to
work-related and experience-related VET or vocational training based partially in
employment. Equally, it hypothesises that systematic, scientifically based school VET was not
given due consideration. Stratmann (1988, p. 22) tries to explain why the full-time school
system of VET established itself in such countries as the Netherlands (in contrast to
Germany). He states that Germanys VET sector has always taken the prerogative of
autonomy, despite the governments interventionalist rights, and thereby resisted all formal
attempts to localise VET in schools.
Space considerations prevent a more extensive discussion and elucidation of the various VET
systems origin and development in Europe (see the somewhat broader comparison focusing
on England: Frommberger, 2001a). Furthermore, little research has been conducted, and too
little comparative history research findings are available, to permit an admissible deductive
conclusion. For this reason we shall limit ourselves to a portrayal of major VET developments
in the Netherlands, and subsequently contrast them to those in Germany, in order to formulate
a few comparative hypotheses.
The failure to reanimate the guild structure in the Netherlands (Goudswaard, 1981; p. 10),
necessitated alternatives to fill demand for skilled workers. Up to 1860, when belated Dutch
industrialisation took off, this demand was filled either by foreign migrant workers
(Brugmans, 1958; p. 88 et seq.) or diverse vocational training institutions such as the
industriescholen, werkscholen and avondtekenscholen (Goudswaard, 1981; p. 91 et seq.,
104 et seq. and Frommberger, 1999; p. 121 et seq.). In some regions, primarily in rural areas
(e.g. in Drenthe), there were further initiatives to reinstate and systematise company-based
VET, at least with regard to the duration of training, wage levels and compulsory evening
school attendance (Santema and Maandag, 1991; Bruinwold Riedel, 1907).
Between 1860 and 1890 (North, 1997), the massive increase in demand for trained workers
was accompanied by a great rise in educational facilities and VET opportunities. The founding
of full-time vocational schools was doubled, particularly of those known as ambachtsscholen
(Van Harderwijk, 1910). The establishment and operation of these craft trade and commercial
technical VET schools was originally the work of various private foundations and interest
groups such as Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunst and Maatschappij tot
verbetering van den Werkenden Stand; only in the 1870s did parishes, towns and provinces
contribute to their upkeep. State subsidies increased towards the end of the 19th century as the
imperial government decided to promote private schools, particularly denominational schools.
The ambachtscholen, a success story which closely resembled the German provincial trade
schools of the day (Onnen, 1900; p. 148 et seq., Frommberger, 1999 for greater detail),
offered an alternative to learning a trade through apprenticeship well into the 20th century.
76
These VET schools espoused qualifying artisans as their goal and also taught general subjects
such as schrijven, rekenen, taal- en stijlofeningen, algemene en vaderlandse geschiednis and
aardrijkskunde (writing, arithmetic, language and style exercises, general and Dutch history
and geography), which were intended to be of general use in the pursuit of a trade.
Methodology was of great importance to the ambachtsschool from the early stages. The
balance of theory and practice in both the didactic curriculum and the didactic methodological
classes was particularly relevant to establishing school-based VET. The ambachtsschool
walked the tight rope between commercial utilitarianism and the exigencies of theory-founded
VET.
The ambachtsscholen won a recognised position in the Netherlands addressing a critical need
for a new form of VET, which was aggravated by the lack of progress made in apprenticeship
training. However, ambachtsschool training provision was never intended to replace the
crucial practical on the job experience in a trade.
A craft is not easily mastered. A sound foundation is laid in school, but the young hands who
leave school at about the age of 16 still need more practice and experience. They are,
however, well in advance of their peers who exclusively trained on the job, not only in their
workmanship. but also in their theoretical knowledge of their subject. (Van Harderwijk,
1910; p. 219) (46).
As the need for comprehensive, systematic VET grew, it became axiomatic in the Netherlands
that a school-based form of occupational training was the most appropriate way to fulfil future
requirements. Moreover, the ambachtsscholen, which constituted the cornerstone of
school-based VET in the Netherlands, were endorsed by the parliament and government of the
day, as well as by craft and trade bodies (Goudswaard, 1981; p. 197 et seq. and passim for
discussion of the ambachtsschool).
A further significant step in the shaping of VET in the Netherlands was the foundation of the
Burgerdagschool, which included extended general education and further postponed working
life by two years. Burgeravondscholen operated along similar lines, but accommodated the
need of the majority to work during the day by giving its theoretical instruction in the evening.
Whilst the Burgerdagscholen failed in 1885, the only school still operating then was one in
Leeuwarden, Frisia, (Goudswaard, 1981; p. 241 et seq.), the evening counterpart had
considerably more success. They recruited at the already established Tekenscholen and
Industriescholen, let their trainees attend school while holding jobs, and oriented themselves,
contrary to the legislatures intention, towards specialist and industry needs (Meppelink, 1961;
p. 76 et seq.).
Burgeravondscholen resembled the German Further Education schools. Onnen noted this
similarity:
(46) Authors translation.
77
Particularly in Germany, specialist training is organised in an entirely different manner than

is common here. There the workplace is the primary site of training. The master craftsmen are
subject to many regulations, as they are here, and it falls to the artisans to train their future
colleagues. There are some accompanying theoretical day schools and numerous further
training schools throughout the land. These further training schools, which can be subdivided
into general and trade schools, are remarkably similar to our burgeravondscholen. They give
exclusively theoretical instruction, and the classes take place in the evening and on Sunday
morning. The subjects taught are generally the same as those offered by our
burgeravondscholen. [...] (Onnen, 1900; p. 148 et seq.) (47).
Like the German further education schools, the Dutch Burgeravondscholen catered
increasingly for the career interests of their trainees. Job-related material increased
significantly despite the initial general education function of these establishments
(Steyn Parve, 1872; p. 979 et seq.). This was the only way these Dutch schools could attract
their clientele. The strategy, stressing sector-specific training, was therefore the same in both
countries. In the case of the Netherlands, we cannot ascertain any function akin to that of the
occupation-oriented further education schools in restabilising the social order within the
imperial power structure as could be seen in Germany (Stratmann, 1992).
The Burgeravondschool remained an important institution for part-time studies among Dutch
jobholders. In 1919 it lost its official general education function and was integrated by law
into the VET system with the Nijverheidsonderwijswet (Second Industrial/Technical
Education Act). The Nijverheidsonderwijswet of 1919 made the field of school-based VET
into a government responsibility. Van Gelder (1919) is credited with publishing the first
complete overview of trade education and training facilities in the Netherlands. His work,
appearing early in 1919, addressed the ambachtsscholen, the tekenscholen, the
burgerdagscholen, and the burgeravondscholen. In addition the Leerlingswezen, the bedrijfsor fabriekscholen and vakscholen are also detailed. The last two categories were trade and
job-specific schools preparatory to employment in large enterprises or sponsored by a given
trade, respectively.
Van Gelder (1919), however, only concerned himself with the description of technical and
trade-based training. His portrayal of VET thus ignored teaching in the flourishing
commercial schools. Although this may seem peculiar to contemporary observers, the
consensus of the era was that the demand for business managers was broadly filled by the
already extant hogere burgerscholen, which were also expected to furnish general education
as part of their brief (Idenburg, 1960; p. 227 et seq.). Although a number of less innovative
commercial schools such as those in Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Maastricht and the first
commercial university, founded in 1913 in Rotterdam, existed at the time, their advocates did
not consider them VET institutions but rather liberal art schools. This position was strongly
endorsed by the national Vereniging voor Handelssonderwijs, founded in 1899. Its official
organ, the Maandblad voor Handelssonderwijs, vociferously argued against their provision of
78
VET (Hoksbergen, 1975; p. 9; Sleumer, 1938; p. 62; Bartels, 1963; p. 50 et seq.). The
tendency to rank commercial training schools among general education establishments
continued in the 20th century. By 1963, the hogere burgerscholen had finally been
subsumed into pre-academic training and general secondary education.
The first Dutch national VET law did not, therefore, include the commercial schools
(de Groot, 1930; p. 24): The Nijverheidsonderwijswet, finally ratified in mid-1919, stipulated
conditions for VET in the Netherlands and drew a demarcation line, at least in legal terms,
between general and vocational training (for more information on the
Nijverheidsonderwijswet cf. Frommberger, 1999).
Apprenticeship training integration into education increased the prestige of in-company
training. An independent standardised programme was formulated and the preceding, often
regionally limited apprenticeship scheme (viz. Drenthe) was replaced by a nationwide system.
Nonetheless, school-based training remained more popular than in-company training:
In die streken, waar geen voldoende ambachtsonderwijs kan worden gegeven [...] here the
concept of ambachtsonderwijs includes school-based instruction, it is therefore apparent to
what degree in-company training was subsidiary [...] moeten wij alles doen om het
sporadisch hier en daar bestaande leerlingwezen aan te moedigen. (de Groot, 1930;
p. 19) (48).
Despite this restriction, the 1930 Minister for Education, Art and Sciences statement in
favour of standardising VET is clear:
Apprentice training is underdeveloped in our land. With this statement I do not wish to
belittle the many people in Drenthe and in West Frisia who have contributed laudable
achievements in this field, but it is undeniable that with these exceptions apprenticeship
training has not thrived in the rest of the Netherlands, and where it has blossomed, growth has
been modest and the limited fruits have been meagre. (de Groot, 1930; p. 18 f) (49).
In the 1920s, apprenticeship training was virtually limited to crafts and cottage industries.
Dual training only became popular after World War II. It remained, however, subsidiary, as
full time vocational schooling became available throughout the Netherlands. In the
mid-1960s, formal integration of vocational and general education was instigated by a law
unifying and governing secondary education, the Mammoetwet (Frommberger, 2001a passim).
It was only in the mid-1980s that strong criticism of the bias in school-based vocational
training surfaced. This eventually led to the objectives of the 1996 law on VET and adult
education which defined and merged the curricula and organisation of school-based and
in-company vocational training.
(48) In the regions where there is no satisfactory trade training, we must do our utmost to encourage such sparse
examples of apprentice training as we find. (Authors translation.)
79
Since then, Dutch young adults taking a non-academic form of VET can choose between a
work-based route and a school-based route. Both variants adopted the same curricular
criteria and the qualifications were equivalent in terms of their relevance to the labour market
and the access right to Further Education (Frommberger, 2003).
6.2.
Historical development of VET in Germany
Whenever and wherever there is talk of German VET, the so-called dual system is always a
prominent feature of the discussion. The system of simultaneous training in enterprises and
vocational schools (Deutscher Ausschuss fr das Erziehungs- und Bildungswesen 1964
[German committee for education and training]) is to this day the predominant path from
school life to working life. Foreign observers of German VET are astonished that a substantial
number of German companies and public institutions employ their own human resources and
tangible assets to train apprentices. This high financial outlay does not confer an exclusive
right to the trained worker, as the training enterprises and institutions are obliged by law to
adhere to a nationwide curriculum. For this reason, instruction is not oriented to corporate or
institutional knowledge and skills, but to groups of more generally applicable skills, the
various combinations of which are recognised occupations, Berufe. At the end of this process
a trainee has every chance of taking employment elsewhere and under better conditions.
Despite the value of the dual system for the transition of young people from compulsory
schooling to working life, the almost exclusive concentration of outside observers on this
system creates a distorted image of VET in Germany. The very term dual system is
misleading. It might suggest that the training in school and enterprise is of equivalent value in
terms of time spent and training given, and not only that they take place simultaneously.
Indeed, training in enterprises dominates, occupying between 70 and 75 % of training time
(see also Kutscha, 1990; p. 289 et seq.; Deissinger, 1998; p. 81 et seq.).
Discussion of form and structure of training schemes for 16-20 year olds still overlooks the
fact that training within the dual system may be the most important part of the system in
quantitative terms, but it remains only part of the entirety. Expressed in numeric terms, in
1999, for example, there were in total some 3.3 million scholars and trainees between the ages
of 16 and 20 (Gebbeken and Reinisch, 2001; p. 287 et seq.). Approximately 23 % of these
attended a grammar school in the hope of qualifying for university admission. A further 6 %
were in full-time education at advanced vocational schools (vocational grammar schools,
higher technical schools) so as to qualify for admission to a university of applied sciences.
Around 30 % of 16-20 year olds thus chose the first path, the academic route preparatory to
higher education, in 1999. More than 50 % of young people in this age bracket took the
second path of a dual system traineeship, generally lasting three years, leading to a
qualification as a journeyman in a craft, blue-collar worker in industry or skilled white-collar
worker for business and administration.
80
In addition to the work-based route within the dual system, there is a third path generally
involving two-year full-time attendance in a vocational school. This pathway within the
German system is largely unknown outside Germany, although in 1999 almost 21 % of the
age group in question attended one of these secondary full-time vocational schools or
Berufsfachschulen. It must be mentioned that not all of these schools offer recognised
vocational qualifications; they are predominantly attended by pupils who failed to find a
training place within the dual system. The number of places available in the dual system is
still insufficient to offer everyone a requested place. There is, however, a whole range of
vocational full-time schools which offer certificates not available elsewhere, i.e. not within the
dual scheme. These typically include such predominantly female professions as nurse,
kindergarten teacher, and laboratory assistant in the medical and chemical fields. These
occupations have never been integrated into the dual system, so that for years there has been a
narrow, but for young women significant, path to a skilled occupation via non-academic
schooling (cf. also Feller, 1997).
It is particularly remarkable, and for foreign observers almost incredible, that pupils virtually
repeat the whole of upper secondary education. Almost 20 % of those young people who, by
dint of 12 or 13 years of school, had gained the right to university or polytechnic education,
either initially or never take up such a place, but opt for a vocational training course within the
dual system. The most popular programmes provide training in the commercial sector,
banking and insurance, information technology and media communications, logistics and
tourism.
Apprenticeship training, that is to say workplace training within the dual system, is therefore
the most popular German pathway from school to job, and this view is shared by employer
and trade unions alike. To understand this situation we must take the history of the dual
system into account. The institutional, legal, economic and cultural foundations of these
schools were laid in the last 20 years of the 19th and the first 20 years of the 20th century
(Greinert, 1993; Stratmann and Schlsser, 1990), but apprentice training in the workplace
draws upon an older tradition. The guilds of craftsmen and small merchants in almost all
medieval towns developed this training system in the 14th and 15th centuries across Europe.
The Guilds lost their enormous social and economic significance with the demise of feudalism
and in the period of proto-industrialisation in the early 19th century (Deissinger, 1992; in this
collection for the UK. For France: Schriewer, 1986; Oerter and Hrner, 1995. For
the Netherlands: Frommberger, 2001b; Wolthuis, 2001).
The eclipse of the German guilds after the Napoleonic Wars was not permanent. Thanks to the
Handwerkerschutzgesetz (Craft Trade Workers Protection Act) of 26 July 1897, many
features of traditional vocational training systems were revived (Greinert, 1993; p. 41).
Chambers of handicrafts were founded as lobbies for interest groups of self-employed workers
in these trades, as were Innungen, (guilds) with compulsory membership for all master
craftsmen and journeymen in a jurisdiction. The chambers of handicrafts were assigned the
essential role of passing regulations on apprenticeship training. Reconstituting trade craft
bodies makes the classical model of apprenticeship to a master craftsman a paragon of
81
German vocational training (Abel, 1963, p. 42). This also indicates the enduring impact of
such bodies on German vocational training.
The Craft Trade Workers Protection Act may be considered a keystone of social and
commercial policy-making evolution in the German empire and its predecessor. This policy
trend established itself in the years after the Reichs foundation in 1870. Previously, that is to
say since the deregulation of private enterprise and the abolition of mandatory guild
membership in Prussia in 1811, the governments of the various German states showed little
interest in VET for craftsmen, merchants and the growing number of industrial workers. They
instead concentrated their financial and political activity on compulsory school education and
the expansion of higher education. Universities and institutions of higher education for
architecture and, later, for finance and commerce, were founded and financially supported to
meet the increasing demand from public administration and enterprise for highly qualified
specialists. Middle management schools for industry and business proliferated, largely thanks
to private initiatives that were promoted and financially supported by the State (Grner, 1967;
Harney, 1980; Reinisch, 2001; Schiersmann, 1979).
Also, largely due to private initiatives, schools for apprentices were opened for instruction on
Sundays and during the evening.
These schools were both repetition schools, since the material covered and supplemented the
reading, writing and arithmetic of primary education, and purveyors of applied vocational
training, teaching such subjects as technical drawing for the craft sector and double entry
bookkeeping to trainees in administration. Known as further training schools or Sunday
schools, they were the predecessors of todays vocational schools attended by trainees during
dual system training. The typical German form of vocational training in craft trades, now
widely known as the dual system, came about with the Craft Trade Workers Protection Act
of 1897 and the almost simultaneous introduction of compulsory accompanying school
attendance for craft trade apprentices.
There is no single reason why the German Empire, and its attendant politically and
economically conservative circles, set store by the application of social and economic policies
furthering the craft trades. Relevant historical research draws attention both to the economic
and commercial motives for German improvement in economic competitiveness by means of
improved worker training (Harney and Tenorth, 1986), and to the socio-political function of
this measure. Both the craft trade leadership and, in particular, the future workers in craft
trades were to be drawn into the conservative camp and thereby turned against the politicised
and union-affiliated aspect of the industrial workforce bolstering the dominant social order
(Greinert, 1975; Stratmann, 1992). In this sense, the traditional environment and conditions of
working life were means of optimising the socialisation and political integration of the
apprentice. The further training schools supported this process. Teachers at these schools were
able to satisfy the professional interests of their pupils by teaching appropriate techniques, and
to take occupation-related training as a stepping stone from which civics might be taught. This
indoctrination was a significant departure from the curriculum of the further training
82
schools. The repetition and elaboration of elementary teaching was replaced by occupational
training and civics as course focuses. The combination of occupational and political
instruction is still a central characteristic of the Berufsschule curriculum.
After the transition from the further training school to the vocational school and the legally
guaranteed return to master-supervised apprenticeship at the beginning of the 20th century,
there were two developments of significance to the VET configuration.
Even before the First World War, employers in the growing metal, electronic and chemical
industries encountered the problem that, given the political monopoly of the craft trades, they
could not meet demand by training their own workers. In this situation the association of
industrial employers adapted the form of classical craft trade training and created industrial
workplace training that shaped the new type of qualified personnel, the skilled worker, as a
counterpart to the artisan journeyman. Like the journeyman, the skilled worker was to
complete a training period, normally three years, and also to attend part-time vocational
school with concluding examinations. This model was later adopted in other fields such as
commerce, finance, insurance and transport, etc.
The basic characteristics of the dual system remained unchanged until 1969. Only the
Vocational Education and Training Act of 1969 led to the limitation of autonomous regulation
of training conditions among employer associations, chambers of handicrafts, and chambers of
commerce and industry. This essentially legalised what was hitherto common practice. There
was, however, one important exception: the unions were accorded equal executive powers in
any matter involving the workers and VET. In line with this, bodies of employers and workers
decide together with the responsible federal authority on creating new training occupations or
changing existent ones. Here the focus is on curricular change. Currently 400 such training
occupations exist. They are binding for both the trainee and the training establishment. A
similar model is also applicable in vocational training schools. Due to the federal structure of
Germany, however, the resulting curricula are not determined at a governmental level but,
rather, by the constituent Lnder.
This brief view of the dual system of vocational training in Germany indicates that there are
many dualities within the German VET system, and not all of them are between
workplace-based and school-based training. A plethora of unsolved problems results from this
pluralism. This, however, changes nothing in regard to the predominant position of
workplace-based VET. The fact is accepted by businesses, government, political parties,
unions and, last but not least, young people in Germany.
83
6.3.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the following may be said about VET structures in the Netherlands and
Germany (50).
Traditionally, the majority of young people opting for vocational training in the Netherlands
do so within the framework of a full-time vocational training school. Theoretical and broad
vocational knowledge is thus predominant, as is the continuing of general education in the
occupation-oriented curriculum. Parallel to this system, the alternative form of VET in the
workplace accompanied by vocational training school attendance has established itself in
some regions. Occupation-specific education of the younger generation in the form of
post-compulsory education was given primarily in schools as a State responsibility to shelter
young people from the working world for as long as possible.
In Germany the majority of young people taking VET do so within the dual VET system. The
work place is thus the mainstay of vocational learning. The responsibility for VET is primarily
determined by employers and, ultimately, by the social partners. Full-time school vocational
training only dominates isolated branches. In these cases it is considered a subsidiary solution.
The historical and comparative perspective raises three questions.
Why did occupational and in-company training establish itself as the training form in
Germany beyond the realm of artisanry to include the technical and commercial fields? Why
did the Dutch form of standardised workplace training for all businesses not become
universal? And why did full-time school-based VET not attain a dominant role in Germany as
it did in the Netherlands and most other European countries?
The development of the various VET systems offers some tentative answers to these crucial
questions. There is, however, a lack of solid historical research dedicated to systematic
investigation and comparison of various single aspects of the problem, and there is still a
paucity of relevant source analysis pertaining to workplace training strategies for
the Netherlands and for other European countries.
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Santema, M.; Maandag, D. W. Het Drentse Stelsel: een voorbeeldig regionaal initiatief: hoe
een noodoplossing van een eeuw geleden bepalend werd voor de vorm van ons huidige
leerlingwezen. Groningen: 1991.
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Jahrhundert. Weinheim/Basel: 1979.
Schriewer, J. Intermedire Instanzen, Selbstverwaltung und berufliche Ausbildungsstrukturen
im historischen Vergleich. Zeitschrift fr Pdagogik, 1986, Vol. 32, p. 69-90.
Sleumer, W. Het economisch onderwijs maatschappelijk beschouwd. Groningen: Wolters,
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87
7.
The dynamics of vocational training innovation

in Switzerland
Philipp Gonon
Switzerland tends to be left on the sidelines in the international debate on educational reform
and rarely receives a mention in comparative international studies carried out in vocational
training research. Only one British study, that by Bierhoff and Prais (1997) attempted to
compare some work-related aspects of primary school teaching and vocational training in
Switzerland with those in UK, although even they tended to focus on the situation in Canton
Zrich. A more recent study of German-speaking countries by Rothe (2001) makes some
comparisons between Switzerland, Austria and Germany but his analysis is not entirely
systematic. Yet the surprising scope of reform undertaken in Switzerland over the past few
years would justify taking a closer look at the situation there and the dynamic pace of reform
compared with other countries. This article hopes to make a start on this.
7.1.
Vocational training as a system
There are a number of reasons why so few comparative international studies take Switzerland
into account. One is the fact that, traditionally, little attention has been devoted to vocational
training policy in Switzerland itself; another is that its presentation to the public abroad has
been little more than rudimentary. Vocational training research, too, has been largely
neglected and has only recently gathered impetus.
The picture presented by Swiss education and training is complex and constantly changing.
Understanding it calls for considerable knowledge and expertise, particularly if one wishes to
gain an overall view of more than one area covering all parts of the country.
Switzerland tends frequently, and over-hastily, to be classified as having adopted the German
vocational training model, with no regard for the western (French-speaking) and
Italian-speaking parts of the country. As a result, use is often made of the term dual system,
which in Switzerland itself is used mainly when different types of learning environments
school and firm are combined in a vocational training system. At first glance this might
seem to hold few problems but closer scrutiny demands clarification. Whereas, historically,
vocational schools were intended as a means of supplementing the training provided by
employers, they gradually increased in status. The 1870s saw the concept of plurality of
training environments gaining ground in order to put greater emphasis on the value of
work-based training (Gonon, 2002b).
Greinert especially sees a system of vocational training not just as linking different learning
environments but as a somewhat more complex construct. He distinguishes between
88
Germanys dual system of vocational training and bureaucratic, state-run systems or purely
market-oriented training models. He qualifies vocational training in German-speaking
countries as a state-controlled market model (Greinert, 1993). His description of the
development in the case of the Federal Republic of Germany also holds good in general terms
for Switzerland.
The dual system [...] is not the outcome of conscious planning and development but has come
into being as an integral whole by a complex historical process. For a long time on-the-job
training and the instruction provided by the vocational schools evolved more or less
independently of one another, only becoming intentionally linked to form a systematic route to
a qualification the dual system at a very late date (Greinert, 1993, p. 19).
Swiss vocational training is similarly not the result of a forward-looking initiative and
planning process; it only came into being in the course of the 1930s when attendance at a
vocational school was made compulsory for all apprentices (Tabin, 1989).
Moreover, apprenticeship training in Switzerland does not only cover areas where
qualifications pose difficulties. What Greinert (1999) refers to as the traditional corporatist
model of German-speaking countries, that puts emphasis on the occupation, is also significant
in its social and innovation policy dimension.
The concept of system was born out of a historical, political and reform-driven debate.
However, the relatively loose connection between vocational school and work-based training
and the lack of coordination and cooperation with the rest of the education system has resulted
in its nature as a system being denied by some involved in vocational and industrial training;
the use of the term dual system is regarded as confusing. Instead some, such as Deissinger,
regard a persons occupation as structurally and functionally the decisive hard core. He sees
this and what he refers to as Beruflichkeit, which might be translated as the occupational
essence, as the organising principle and not the system in German vocational training. A
category occupation which has come into being, as he says, as a function of typically
national historical factors and a cultural shaping of the relationships between training and
employment has ensured that a specific design of framework of economic policy and
organisation corresponds with a curricular shaping of vocational qualification (Deissinger,
1998; p. 254).
Occupation and/or the duality of learning environments and typically national modes of
control come up against their limits when a country allows different forms of vocational
training to coexist. This is exactly what has happened in the case of Switzerland.
7.1.1.
Vocational training as a subsystem of education
A different approach is to consider vocational training as a subsystem of social education

contributing to the differences coexisting within the education system. We can refer to
vocational training as a system insofar as it exists as an independent functional system
89
alongside others and to use the terminology of systems theory relies on operational linkage
and structural coupling. Vocational training also offers typical patterns of modern society
with its functional differences (Luhmann, 2002; p. 116).
Vocational training seeks to create a sound basis for a subsequent career (idem, p. 719) in a
specific sector of the employment system. It is a phase of a persons life with a lasting
socialising and educating effect renewable in the course of continuing training and adult
education (idem, p. 101). From the occupational point of view certain abilities, skills and
attitudes are delivered and working and intermediate levels coupled (Harney, 1990; p. 226).
Work and occupation were incorporated into the education system as relevant points of
reference at the beginning of the 20th century and led to a new concept that Schorr calls
general education taking account of the economic system (Schorr, 1996; p. 154) referring to
the fact that building on occupational skills guarantees the ability to learn. On the basis of
knowledge (and skills) the individual achieves other ways and means of directing the course
of his future career (Luhmann, 2002; p. 97) and hence of extending his radius of action (idem,
p. 100).
The economic system is relevant here in that the question of appropriate work following
training, thus an employment system, is of central importance. It is the discrepancy between
long-term career planning and short-term fluctuations in the economy and its incalculability
that gives rise to the paradox of two conflicting principles between which the education
system and its vocational training subsystem oscillate, namely specialisation and
generalisation. Because of this conflict, the education system is ripe for reform in any
historical situation (idem, p. 125 et seq.). Moreover, it can react to unpredictability by the very
fact of this self-generated uncertainty.
Defining vocational training as a subsystem of the education system has the advantage that we
are not obliged immediately to differentiate between its widely diverging, regional, cantonal
and international features. Switzerland, in particular, has a number of hybrid forms extending
beyond linguistic frontiers, such as the institutionalised arrangement of school education in
combination with work-based training, with a view to providing access to higher education,
vocational or otherwise, as well as to employment.
The fact of its incorporation within the education system, plus its versatility in the sense of
leading to a qualification and providing access to both employment and higher education,
shows the Swiss vocational training system to be surprisingly dynamic.
7.2.
Educational reform through improvement
Like most education systems, the Swiss system requires stability and continuity. Generally
speaking, a cautious attitude is adopted as regards innovation, so that far-reaching changes
have little hope of realisation. During the 1960s the advocates of comprehensive schools and
90
those wishing to increase the proportion of pupils obtaining the Matura equivalent of the
German Abitur found progress hard. Plans announced for reform, therefore, tend not to have
the aim of radically changing the status quo but of improving on it (Gonon, 2002b;
p. 321 et seq.). To date Switzerland stands out as the European country with the lowest
proportion of students going on to university in any academic year and one of the highest
proportions of young adults achieving a vocational (skilled worker) qualification. Upper
secondary education is consequently divided into two streams, a vocationally oriented one
attracting most pupils and a general education stream which, though expanding, is levelling
off in the region of 20 % of the total figure. Until just on 10 years ago general and vocational
education were separate and this basic architecture, whose rigid separation probably makes it
unique in Europe, has even today been little challenged. Only when the vocational Matura
qualification was created in 1993 was a stronger link forged between vocational training and
general education committed to an academic curriculum (Kiener and Gonon, 1998).
7.2.1.
Federalism and particularity as drivers for reform
Switzerland is one of the few countries that does not have a national ministry of education.
Efforts in this direction during the 19th century failed and all matters connected with
education are one of the main responsibilities of cantonal government. The sole exception is
vocational training, which for historical reasons is firmly linked to the running of the national
economy. Education in Switzerland, therefore, has marked regional or cantonal features and
one often hears references to the countrys 26 education systems, in line with the number of its
cantons. Vocational training, however, is governed by national legislation. Because of the
disparities still existing in vocational training, the 1978 law on vocational training in force
until a short time ago was a framework law that allowed considerable scope for ministerial
orders, implementing regulations and cantonal provisions. In the German-speaking part of
Switzerland the dual system or in fact the triad system if one considers the three learning
environments of workplace, vocational school and training centre serving a number of firms
has become firmly established. However, the predominant vocational training model in the
French- and Italian-speaking parts of the country is the technical college, offering a
combination of technical and general subjects (Wettstein, 1994). The new law on vocational
training, which came into force in 2003, essentially holds to this arrangement. The same
cantonal features and characteristics, varying with the branch of industry or region concerned,
are also to be found in adult and further education. It is in this area of tension between
federalism and the need for nationally uniform structures to provide a common basis for
communication and mobility that Swiss education policy is situated. Arriving at a consensus
by the typically Swiss procedure of Vernehmlassung, whereby all interested parties are
informed of the content of draft legislation and given the opportunity to make comments and
proposals before it comes before parliament, is an important element in national education
policy. A variety of models and solutions make it possible to view varying cantonal features as
experiments being conducted in a sort of large laboratory as a basis for decisions on further
innovation. That, at least, was how Switzerlands first major comparative educationalist,
91
Marc Antoine Julien de Paris, saw the situation as far as the cantons were concerned (Gonon,
1998).
7.3.
Early vocational training in Switzerland
In the 19th century, factories did not provide training for skilled or semi-skilled occupations.
When the upsurge in industrial activity and free trade resulted in plummeting volume sales
due to a lack of competitiveness, firms took a long time to realise that they needed to enhance
the quality of their products to withstand foreign competition, partly by improving the skills of
their workforces through their training provision.
The road to the reform of vocational training was long and arduous. In the late 1820s the
Schweizer Gemeinntzige Gesellschaft (SGG) a public benefit organisation was already
discussing social and political participation and integration and further training in what were
known as further training schools. Business and industry and local trade associations and the
then Schweizerischer Gewerbeverein or Swiss Association of Trades that existed between
1849 and 1864 all came down firmly in favour of protectionism. Only after 1870 did business
and industry become more open to training reform, mainly at the instigation of the
Schweizerischer Gewerbeverband (Swiss Trade Association) that was founded in 1879. The
concept of apprenticeship that still largely influences vocational training today became
established in the 1880s. Like primary schooling, it was influenced by the introduction of a
recruitment examination for teachers in 1875 and also took over some elements of the
examination material. On-the-job apprenticeship training was to be supplemented in the
further training schools later known as vocational schools by the teaching of civics and the
revision and development of subjects taught at primary school. Specialist subjects, particularly
drawing and occupational subject-matters, were also to be included in the curriculum. The
decision of the federal parliament in 1884 to subsidise vocational training establishments laid
the foundations for vocational training. In addition to the government-run training workshops
and full-time schools, it opened the way for the development of the dual training system based
on two training environments, the firm and the vocational school.
Industrial organisations and political parties unanimously demanded State intervention to
preserve the traditional apprenticeship served under a master and to modernise education
following compulsory primary education. They called for assistance for further training
schools and for new institutions such as specialist training schools and training workshops to
be set up. These, unlike the training given by a master, would provide basic vocational
training in the classroom. The list of demands also included assistance for craft trade
museums, regulation of vocational training at national level, and supervision of teaching.
Not until 1930 was federal legislation passed requiring a valid apprenticeship agreement for
industrial, craft and commercial occupations and making a formal qualification dependent on
vocational school attendance. Other legislation regulating vocational training for industrial
and craft trades was introduced in 1963 and 1978. The amendments made were designed to
92
underpin and expand vocational training while retaining its existing variety. The dual training
model predominant in German-speaking Switzerland owes its existence to the efforts of a
number of bodies ranging from occupational organisations and the government to schools,
manufacturing firms, parents and apprentices. It proved so successful that it continued to exist
with modifications and with an increasing amount of classroom instruction well into the
age of large-scale industry and services.
7.3.1.
The third learning environment: the synthesis of learning and work
We shall look in more detail at one innovative concept and its current dynamic. This is just
one of the elements that help to ensure that vocational training continues to be modified,
diversified and pluralised through the involvement of several protagonists.
The new Swiss law on vocational training expressly refers to the third learning environment as
a means of combining the advantages of on-the-job training and classroom learning. Hitherto,
so-called third learning environments offered introductory courses for young people
beginning their vocational training. The importance of these is now recognised in the
2003 law (nBBG, 2003), which provides for them to be used for other types of training as
well.
School and workplace can be regarded as radical alternative learning environments. Should
people learn at the actual workplace? Or should they learn everything they need to know at
school? Previous discussion centred on whether to transform school as an institution, to put it
at the service of the world of work as against transforming the workplace into a place of
instruction. Both concepts can be used empathetically or be read as criticism. It was the
repeated movement between school and workplace that ultimately led to realisation of the
potential of a third learning environment.
7.3.2.
Working at school: Pestalozzi, Fellenberg and others
It was during the age of enlightenment that Campe, the German educator and author of
childrens books, wrote a pamphlet entitled Concerning a number of disregarded or unused
means for promoting industry, the population and public prosperity, in which he proposed
that every schoolhouse should have two rooms allocated for instruction (Campe, 1786; p. 10).
In so doing he was repeating the demands of other educators of the period. One room was to
be devoted to teaching while, in the other, a person with the appropriate skills would teach all
kinds of handwork knitting, sewing, spinning, etc. The children would switch from one
room to the other. This would put an end to idleness and at the same time direct pupils
inherent urge to be active into useful channels. Those desirous of forming industrious people
should set up workshops in schools, thereby contributing to peoples development and
stimulating activity in crafts, arts and science (idem, p. 17). Campe, however, was not mainly
concerned with the qualifying skills that could be acquired while working with machines and
in farming. He simply believed that the character of industrious people, indeed of a whole
93
nation, could be reshaped by teaching sensible, clever, skilful, hardworking and honest people
how to work.
Like many other educators of his time Campe was an advocate of industrial schools. The word
industry as used here should not be understood only in its modern sense but as having a
meaning close to that of the Latin industria, that of diligence and determination.
The educator of the period best known today, Pestalozzi, was another advocate of such
industriousness in his early writings (Pestalozzi, 1927). In his novel Lienhard und Gertrud,
written for the people, the children are described as knitting, sewing and spinning cotton.
Instructed by their mother they work as they do at home for the sake of morality. Freude bey
der Arbeit, Munterkeit im Genuss der Bedrfnisse und in der Erfllung der Pflichten des
Lebens (Joy in work, a cheerful enjoyment of needs and fulfilment of lifes duties) and
Gewinnst der Gewerbsamkeit (gain from industriousness) are the consequence (loc. cit.,
Vol. 5, p. 151). Education in Pestalozzis view should impart more than mere knowledge. In
this he knew himself to be in agreement with Fellenberg, who on his school estate of Hofwyl,
used work as a means of inculcating a moral sense as well as providing training in agriculture,
mans first form of work (Guggisberg, 1953).
According to this view, individual happiness is bound up with usefulness to society. Its
advocates regarded educating young people to be industrious as important both for work and
society. Inventiveness and being accustomed to farm work were fused conceptually together.
In all these schemes and transpositions it was life in the family home, the farming household,
that, by complementing or replacing traditional school instruction, helped to equip pupils with
useful knowhow while nurturing the virtues of enterprise and a constant willingness to
innovate for the good of the community as a whole.
School had to become more like farming, domestic economy, the craft trades or work in
industry that was then emerging. At least according to leading educationalists at the beginning
of the 19th century, it needed to become a place of work. This way of thinking persisted into
the 20th century, when it was defended by so internationally respected a personality as
Kerschensteiner (Gonon, 2002a). The converse view that the workplace should be made a
place of education underlay the reforming efforts of some educationalists and politicians
towards the end of the 19th century.
7.3.3.
The workplace as school: Schppi, Bendel, etc.
As early as 1845, Zschokke, in a novel entitled Meister Jordan oder das Handwerk hat
goldenen Boden (Master Jordan or craft work has a golden base) described how, instead of
despising school instruction, perceptive craftsmen sought to build on it in order to work
intelligently (Zschokke, 1893).
94
As he saw it, it was not school reform or reorganisation of the education system that was
needed when new ways of training people for work were being considered, but raising the
status of the craft trades. Towards the end of the 19th century, therefore, interest in
Switzerland became focused on apprenticeship training. According to the Winterthur teacher
Hug, writing in 1881, those wishing to improve the economic situation of the craft trades and
small-scale industry also needed to keep an eye on what he termed the social question. But
raising the educational level would not be achieved solely through teaching in primary
schools. The training firms gave to apprentices was also in need of reform, as were the further
training schools that had already been set up on the basis of local initiatives. Also needed,
however, were specialist craft-related courses at suitable institutions, specialised vocational
schools, craft museums and training workshops (Hug, 1881; p. 23 et seq.).
In training workshops methodical working, versatility and continuing instruction could be
used to avoid the shortcomings of masters workshops (idem, p. 31). Hug referred to the
reports of the economist Karl Bcher in his 1878 publication Die Lehrlingswesen und die
gewerbliche Bildung in Frankreich (Apprenticeship and craft training in France). Since Hug
considered well organised training workshops as the ideal for craft apprenticeships
(p. 31 et seq.) but felt their general introduction to be impractical, he emphasised the need to
revise workshop instruction. Since there was little room for state intervention, it was up to the
guilds to ensure that their members voluntarily attended courses enabling them to become
well-trained masters.
Boos argued along similar lines, although he placed more stress on reforming apprenticeship
training in firms through the introduction of examinations to be validated by a central chamber
of trade and commerce and through appropriate legislation (Boos, 1881; p. 46 et seq.).
Examinations at the end of a period of apprenticeship and the award of prizes for work
produced by apprentices would act as incentives to firms to systematise their training. The
apprenticeship examinations should not, as previously, consist entirely of producing a piece of
work to qualify as a journeyman; instead they should involve specific questions to ascertain a
candidates knowledge of the craft or trade as well as the most important aspects of what was
taught at the further training schools (p. 49). General knowledge and drawing should,
moreover, be taught during the daytime and not in the evening when workers were tired.
Those critical of the situation in the crafts and trades at the time wanted more emphasis on
training young recruits. The traditional master/apprentice relationship was no longer
considered so effective in terms of the instruction provided. The craftsmen themselves were
lacking in teaching skills, and in some cases even in craft skills, while mechanisation and
division of labour militated against systematic instruction. At the same time, severe
competitive pressure was being exerted by large industrial firms at home and abroad, leaving
little time for people to master a trade thoroughly. Schppi was among those who realised that
the strict but beneficial discipline that had existed among members of a guild was gone never
to return. And even the apprentices life as a member of the masters family, which did much
to enhance his training, had become a rare exception.
95
Nowadays a master endeavours to shape the apprentice into a useful worker as quickly as
possible. The relationship between the two is rather loose, it is a relationship of a paid worker
to his employer and no longer one of training (Schppi, 1882; p. 7).
In a thorough analysis published in 1883, Bendel, the director of the Industry and Crafts
Museum in St Gallen, stated his opinion that, in future, training in industry and the craft trades
would have to be carried out largely by firms, but also in schools and museums in order to
ensure its currency. Isolated reforms offered too little prospect of success. What was needed
was a concerted effort by all concerned and particularly financial assistance from federal
government (Bendel, 1883; p. 76). He also listed a series of measures that would serve to
underpin on-the-job training.
7.3.4.
Pluralisation of vocational training
In this brief historical account we have tried to show the motives underlying the third
learning environment.
Campe, Pestalozzi and others wanted to reform school education because it was too far
removed from the needs of the economy and out of reach of poor people. Industriousness,
therefore, was a political and economic reform project of the age of enlightenment to be
carried out in schools. Zschokke, Schppi and Bendel in their turn criticised the outdated
instruction being provided by firms and the limitations on trade and craft production methods
imposed by the guilds. They wanted more legislation and training to remedy the situation at
the end of the 19th century and ensure competitiveness by helping apprentices acquire
practical skills and general knowledge.
The tasks of the third learning environment emerge from all this as follows.
It was a project for reform aimed at bridging the gap between informal learning, mainly on the
job, and formal school learning. The third learning environment can thus be defined
negatively on the basis of the shortcomings of school and industry. In positive terms it seeks
to combine the advantages of learning on the job with those of systematic instruction. This has
organisational, curricular and didactic aspects. Organisationally the third learning environment
bears similarities with a school or sheltered area away from day-to-day production work; it
may be a training workshop. In curricular terms work-related knowledge and skills are
systematically organised and conveyed in theoretical and practical stages. Methodologically
the emphasis is on practical, work-related instruction and learning that leaves sufficient room
for trial and experiment. The tasks of the third learning environment can be defined as
introducing trainees to work of a certain complexity away from the actual production location.
This permits greater tolerance of errors which can then be usefully reflected on (Dewey,
1997).
96
Introductory courses for those starting out on their apprenticeship remain an important aspect
of the third learning environment, which also provides an opportunity to go more deeply into a
subject or to order know-how already acquired in a work context and to put theoretical
knowledge into practice. Work towards qualification can progress more carefully and
systematically. Experience gained on the job should be consolidated by repetition and
reflection in a sheltered environment. Finally, the third learning environment can take on tasks
in continuing and further training, retraining and subsequent qualification. The most
promising opportunities of a third learning environment lie in the awareness of acquiring a
learning culture.
7.4.
Conclusion
Vocational training remains heavily influenced by the type of occupation concerned. This holds
good even though the new law on vocational training talks less about occupation and more
about work organisation (instead of occupational organisations) and about educational
ordinances rather than training regulations. The term dual system only partly takes account
of vocational training as it is today in that several learning environments and agents are now
involved and Switzerland in its administrative variety boasts a plurality of forms of vocational
training and training environments, institutions and links between them. The education system
with vocational training is embedded in a political system of small-scale, cooperative federalism.
It is these characteristics that permit wide-ranging experimentation in educational innovation
to exist with plurality of work- and classroom-based forms of learning and their combinations,
heavily influenced by regional and cantonal tradition. Probably the most interesting trend is
the growing incorporation of vocational training into the state education system which, since
the 1990s, has been lent impetus by the creation of a vocational Matura qualification and the
involvement of different agents from the general education and vocational training spheres. This
development provides access to higher education as vocational training is now directed more
towards general and more cantonally influenced education policy. As a result, since the 1990s
cantonal vocational training offices have been increasingly taken out of the realm of
economics departments and brought under the education authorities.
Switzerlands surprisingly high level of experimentation and innovation in vocational training
in recent years is largely due to greater openness to developments abroad and the state
education system. The call to make vocational training more attractive and flexible and for
greater transparency of structures and forms of learning has altered Swiss vocational training.
The price of greater attractiveness has been the sacrifice of some of its typical characteristics.
97
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Harney, K. Zum Beginn von Anfang und Ende. Tradition und Kontingenz der
Berufsausbildung am Beispiel schwerindustrieller Betriebsformen. In Luhmann, N.; Schorr, E.
(eds). Zwischen Anfang und Ende: Fragen an die Pdagogik. Frankfurt: stw, 1990,
p. 206-227.
Hug, G. Das gewerbliche Lehrlingswesen: zwei Preisschriften. Winterthur: Zentralvorstand
des schweiz. Gewerbevereins, 1881, p. 7-38.
Kiener, U.; Gonon, Ph. Die Berufsmatur: ein Fallbeispiel schweizerischer Bildungspolitik.
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Spranger, E.; Stettbacher, H. (eds). Smtliche Werke. Berlin: 1927, Vol. 1.
Pestalozzi, J. H. Lienhard und Gertrud. In Buchenau, A; Spranger, E.; Stettbacher, H. (eds).
Smtliche Werke. Berlin: 1927, Vol. 5.
Rothe, G. Die Systeme beruflicher Qualifizierung Deutschlands, sterreichs und der Schweiz.
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(eds). Zwischen System und Umwelt: Fragen an die Pdagogik. Frankfurt: stw, 1996,
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Tabin, J.-P. Formation professionnelle en Suisse. Lausanne: ditions Ralits, 1989.
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8.
Can European policy draw on models of

vocational education?
Anja Heikkinen
8.1.
The influence of the history of vocational education and

training on policy
Studies of the transformation of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe focus on
systems, even when they are based on sector-specific, often technical, perspectives (51). VET
is seldom considered as an internally complex field composed of different sectors or as an
outcome of wider educational, political and social programmes. Greinert (1993) has presented
probably the most elaborated and utilised typology of VET systems, in his description of a
market or liberalist model (UK, US), a bureaucractic or school model (France, Italy,
Scandinavia), a dual model (Austria, Germany, Switzerland). Deissinger (1995) has tried to
improve the paradigm by introducing, against the output factors of the VET system, input
factors called qualification styles with their three structural and functional dimensions:
(a) political and organisational regulation frameworks for vocational training (52) processes
(ordnungspolitisch-organitorische Rahmen des Qualifizierungsprozesses);
(b) didactic-curricular orientation of vocational training processes (didaktisch-curriculare
Ausrichtung des Qualifizierungsprozesses);
(c) the place of the vocational training process in the context of socialisation (Verortung des
Qualifizierungsprozesses im Sozialisationszusammenhang).
As an example of qualification styles, Deissinger charaterises Germany, which represents:
(a) cooperation of State and industry in giving competing regulations;
(51) One aim of this chapter is to question universalising interpretations of occupational work and vocational
education. Even if there is little space to go deeper, one could notice that in the Finnish discussion,
vocational education has come to have much wider meaning including all branches of industry, most levels
of occupational hierarchies, etc. than in other countries in Europe. The concept of VET school or
school-based VET has referred to all occupational fields, although recently the terminology has shifted
towards the dominating European VET discourse (Heikkinen, 1995; Heikkinen et al., 1999, Heikkinen and
Kuusisto 2000, Heikkinen and Henriksson 2002).
(52) Deissinger's concept of qualification, based on Beck, means knowledge, abilities and attitudes of a person
in relation to demands of a (certain) work-place. It describes how far the capacities of an individual
facilitates/enables them to meet or fulfil the necessary functions (of an occupation).
100
(b) aims and contents of training oriented towards complex qualification profiles
(occupational principle, Berufsprinzip);
(c) pedagogical relevance of socialisation in VET, which mediates between general
schooling and employment and establishing a learning environment separate both from
school and employment.
Researchers in different national cultural contexts have been strongly influenced by German
interpretations. Even if Greinert (1999) has renamed his models into classical systems of
vocational education, the value of these typologies as theoretical constructions is
overshadowed by the tendency to apply them as models for interpreting realities (53), when
countries are compared.
The model approach tends to use history in an a-historical way by taking certain moments of
the historical process as unquestionable starting points for comparison. The aim of this
chapter is to show the need for a historicising approach in cross-cultural discussions on VET
i.e. questioning the emergence and transformation of meanings and functions that it may have.
In starting this it may be important to study times when VET was confronted with other forms
of education. Debates on the nature, length and universality of compulsory or primary
education and on reintegration of people into employment and education, related to
transformations in economy and society, repeatedly provide a revealing platform for
discussions about the distinctiveness of different forms of education. In this context,
continuing
education
(jatko-opetus,
Fortbildung,
fortsttningsskola,
fortsettelse/framhaldsutdanning) refers to institutional solutions and pedagogical definitions
about education and training related to peoples entrance (typically from initial/compulsory
education) into employment and society. Even if nowadays it is considered as age-bound
student flows or pathways through education, pedagogically continuing education has been
concerned with participation in social, political and occupational life.
By recognising and making visible certain entities, phenomena, changes and continuities as
being relevant in vocational education, researchers help to define work and education at
subnational, national and supranational levels. Traditionally, history and education have been
the national(ist) disciplines, promoting building of nation-States, national cultures and
industries. In the making of the European economic, educational and research area, they may
continue as promoters of programmes of building Europe of a certain kind. The following
sections discussing continuing education in Finland, Nordic countries and Germany, primarily
since the late 19th century, do not aim at presenting (correct) pictures of the development of
VET. With the lack of cross-cultural research, they remain reflections on a few culturally
typical characterisations of VET from a restricted Finnish point of view.
(53) Miller argues in his analyses of the culture of virtualism, that there is no demand for abstractions and models
of reality in order to understand and shape it. On the contrary, there is a market for abstractions, which
replace rather than model the phenomena they purport to represent. Research and researchers increasingly
adopt a consultative approach in legitimisation of managerial governance, which has the power to modify
reality according to the abstractions, by which politicians wish to interpret it (Miller, 2002).
101
8.2.
Continuing education in Finland
Finnish research on continuing education has been overshadowed by the interest in

transformation of the binary system of folk school and gymnasium into a unified system of
comprehensive education. Studying the latter together with VET would open up new insights
into the complex functions of education in general. While the popular-democratic conceptions
of Finnish vocational education are widely ignored, the focus here is on relations between
folk education and vocational education, although they both increasingly had to compromise
with academic education.
The development of Finnish VET had a kick start after the wars between France, Russia and
Sweden-Finland, when Finland became an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian empire in
1809. For decades, society was reorganising and developing basic structures of economy,
education and governance. The first efforts in a large country with few factories and schools,
with a mostly self-sustaining, poor rural population, were holistic programmes (Heikkinen,
1995; 2000a; Heikkinen et al.,1999). For a long time, the same networks were responsible for
all initiatives in the developing industries and education. The focus of emerging VET was on
more efficient and rational farming and healthy living and on the creation of industrially
enlightened civil servants and leaders for the country. It was indicative of the connection
between State and industry that the first schools for crafts and industry (1842 Act on training
craftsmen and manufacturers and the 1847 Act on technical real-schools) were established by
the Board of Manufacture, one of the first national boards with the explicit task of promoting
vocational education. The Act was based on initiatives from the crafts sector and the schools
had a clear vocational mission.
Organising folk education remained the duty of the Lutheran church, homes and
municipalities until the 1860s. The differences between rural communities and towns were
large until the gradual liberation of trade and industry from the 1860s. However, the first
non-religious inspectors of folk schools were appointed in 1861 and the independent Board
of Schools Affairs (which means Education) was established in 1869. The national decree on
folk schools in 1866 was an outcome of a wider Fennoman(54) programme on folk
enlightenment, which was motivated by economical and practical aims, especially concerning
the rural population.
The debate on relations between VET, folk education and continuing education increased
significantly during the 1880s. Despite the politicised nature of the Finnish
popular-democratic enlightenment connected to the language struggle between Swedish and
Finnish it was more pragmatic and vocationally oriented than in other Nordic countries. The
activation of the Fennoman movement motivated some bigger towns to start more systematic
teaching of general subjects, home economics and handicraft in continuing classes. The 1879
(54) The Fennomans were the most important political movement in the 19th century Grand Duchy of Finland.
After the Crimean War, they founded the Finnish Party and intensified the language conflict attempting to
raise the Finnish language and Finnish culture from peasant-status to the position of a national language and
a national culture.
102
Act on liberation of trade obliged employers to release employees under 15 to attend school in
the evenings. Depending on the region, this could mean either continuing classes in the folk
school or the school for crafts and industry. Education was considered to have two different
aims (Teollisuushallituksen, 1888). First, it was to provide all children with general education
and education for citizenship, which was also the prerequisite for vocational training, and this
is what the decree on continuing classes meant. Second, the Trade Act referred to
school-based vocational education, which aimed at providing occupational knowledge and
support for learning at work. Some civil servants and crafts associations suggested obligatory
attendance at schools for crafts and industry until the age of 21, but with little consequence.
The few crafts had little influence, and industrial workers none, in the industrial Finland
project, whose main focus was in developing Finnish engineers (later foremen and skilled
workers) through full-time VET.
While the emerging VET institutions in the late 19th century increasingly integrated the
promotion of different areas of industry to the agricultural/farmers, industrial and welfare
Finland projects, the paradigms of VET started to diverge accordingly. All parties had their
headquarters in the expanding national governance. One of the main proponents of continuing
education from the 1890s until the 1920s was Mikael Soininen (Johnsson, 1906), head of the
Teacher Seminar, inspector and head of the Board of Education (55). His prime concern was
education for the nation and from this perspective he considered all forms of education. In his
article, written after the reform of general election rights 1905, he summarises his educational
programme.
On reaching adulthood, every young man and woman has to vote about the fate of the country
[] Where is s/he going to get all the knowledge and maturity for judgement, which is
required? Where is s/he going to get comprehension from the structure and needs of the
society, in order to become able as its legislator and governor? [] These are the real
challenges for the survival of our nation. The most natural response to them should be the
expansion of popular education in such a way, that it can provide guidance needed in these
matters [] Social science, which is so important for our nation during these times, must be
taught after the folk school. For that reason we need some kind of continuing education after
initial school years. But this is not the only reason, why continuing education is needed []
Technical drawing and other preparatory instruction for different industries has become quite
usual for urban youngsters in all countries; the rural population needs general instruction in
the basics of rational, up-to-date agriculture; future farmers wives should have education in
the affairs of the household; everybody should know the basics of general health-care,
including many special areas, which are deeply related to the physical and ethical livelihood of
the nation (Johnsson, 1906).
Between the 1880s and the 1910s, the promotion of the Finnish economy and industries and
provision of education happened parallel to Finland projects. The consensual defence against
(55) Mikael Soininen (Johnsson, 1906) belonged to the progressive Young Fennomans and was active in
promoting the Finnish cooperative movement and developing the folk school into a school for life.
103
pressure from Russification was channelled through shared efforts to develop national
industries and education. Along with new branch departments and boards, a great number of
schools, institutes and advisers in all branches of industry were established. The proponents of
distinctive VET, especially in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and developers of folk
school and continuing school in the Ministry of Education, managed for some time to
collaborate in planning national reforms for post-compulsory education. Jalmari Kekkonen,
the pioneer and inspector of VET in crafts and industry (1908-32), suggested that Continuing
school could serve as preparation for apprenticeship schools, replacing evening or part-time
schools and followers of the schools for crafts and industry, which in towns had been
substituted by full-time vocational schools for boys and girls since 1899. The inadequate
apprenticeship schools could thus be improved into real vocational schools instead of being
substitutes for continuing school. The mission of vocational schools was to promote the
development of occupations; they had to be practical and authentic workplaces, but dominated
by pedagogy (Teollisuushallituksen, 1923; Heikkinen, 1995).
However, tensions between the Finland projects were activated after the Russian revolution,
the establishment of the independent nation-State and civil war. Consensual reform plans
from the turn of the century were implemented in the 1920s in a completely new political and
economic situation. The contrasts between urban and rural areas, life forms and industries,
became visible, the popular movements started to split into communist, social democratic and
agrarian parties and the confrontations between workers and employers moved to the national
level. Also the act on universal obligation to attend folk school was prolonged till 1921 (56).
The act stated the obligation to attend (folk) continuing school for two years after
compulsory schooling, if the young person did not continue her/his studies in some other
school. It was crucial whether vocational schools could be considered as other schools. Once
the folk school had become established and the political and labour market associations were
established beside the popular-democratic movements, the divisions between citizenship
education, academic education and vocational education became institutionalised. Advocates
of the comprehensive continuing school, conceiving themselves as the followers of the
Fennoman programme of universal citizenship, defended it as a general, practical school for
the majority of the age group (except grammar school students) and as education for
citizenship. Many proponents of farmers Finland saw continuing school also as an alternative
to initial VET in rural communities, because of the difficulties in providing full-time
vocational schools for peasantry. The opponents, the proponents of VET for crafts and
industry, defended the distinctiveness of vocational education against education for
citizenship and academic education and emphasised its vital link to industry. In urban
municipalities, VET schools were favoured as substitutes for continuing schools until the
1940s.
(56) However, the preparatory schools in towns and first classes of gymnasium, i.e. middle school, maintained
their status as substitutes, until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively.
104
Between the 1920s and the 1940s there were repeated initiatives from the Ministry and Board
of Education and Teacher Seminars about developing continuing school into practically
oriented general vocational school, which would substitute the former institutes of lower VET
(Salo, 1944). They partly connected to a wider political cleansing and domestication of
administration, increasing the power of rural and popular parties and associations, which at
that time were holding positions in the Ministries of Education and Agriculture and had close
links to the folk education movement (Heikkinen et al., 1999). The proponents of womens
VET beside crafts and industry, also in rural industries (agriculture, animal husbandry,
household economy) strongly protested against suggestions of transferring only female
branches of VET into continuing school and under the governance of Board of Education.
However, there were controversies among proponents of continuing school as well,
personified in folk school inspector Alfred Salmela, its most aggressive advocate between
1926 and 1964. In his programme of patriotic, universal folk education, the aim of
continuing school was, in the first place, to guarantee education for citizenship, then to give
occupational guidance and finally to provide practical and occupationally oriented education.
Salmela only accepted the gymnasium as an alternative for intellectually talented children
(Kailanp, 1962).
His programme was seemingly successful. Continuing school became obligatory for
applicants for other schools in 1943 and in the 1958 reform it was renamed into School for
Citizenship (Kailanp, 1962). The period between the 1930s and 1945 was the peak for
continuing school, especially in rural areas, where the enrolment rate could be 140 %
compared to the age group (57). The victory was short (Jauhiainen, 2002): the popularity of
gymnasium and middle school exploded and vocational education had taken off and gained
national recognition in modernising Finnish VET. Reform of comprehensive schools and the
system of school-based VET, also integrated to the welfare Finland project, were just about to
be implemented.
8.3.
Continuing education in Nordic countries and Germany
In order to show the potential of reflections on continuing education for cross-cultural

research on VET, this section makes a few comments about developments in Germany and
other Nordic countries. The attempt is biased, since there is copious literature on the topic in
Germany, compared to marginal interest among Nordic researchers. In Germany, the debate of
continuing education (Fortbildungsschule) ended into its transformation into vocational
school (Berufsschule). In contrast, in no Nordic country did the initiatives and discussions,
even if different from each other, lead to this solution.
(57) The enrolment rate is an indicator of the meaning of continuing education as a promoter of political,
economic and social participation. VET schools, continuing schools and folk high schools were recruiting
different age cohorts, also adults, until universal education system started to take effect. Paradoxically,
despite educational reform and raising educational expectations, the quota of poorly educated seems
constant.
105
In Germany, the crucial dispute about continuing education concerned urban, male youngsters.
Apprenticeship training, controlled by the craft and industry, was still the dominant form of
vocational education in the period of rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and migration of late
19th century. In many regions, attendance at general often-religious continuing school had
already been obligatory for young people. Because of the erosion of familial forms of
upbringing, the integration of occupation and citizenship was endangered among small
entrepreneurs and workers (Greinert, 1990; Stratmann, 1990; Wahle, 1994). Furthermore,
industrialisation threatened the prevailing social, economic and political order: big,
export-oriented industry undermined the status of crafts and industrial workers represented a
danger of socialism and revolution. However, was that instead of crafts and industry,
vocational schools were initiated by the alliance of primary school teachers and politicians
(Deutsche Verein fur das Fortbildungswesen, founded 1892-96), supported by educationalists,
accepted by industrialists and gradually also by the crafts sector. In striking contrast to other
cultures, in Germany the educationists such as Georg Kerschensteiner and Eduard Spranger
made the effort to develop a genuine pedagogical alternative for VET, which would solve
this problem. Being vocational, continuing school became a politically (legally adopted) and
pedagogically legitimate alternative in secondary education. The crucial point in the
stabilisation of vocational schools was that, in connection with apprenticeship, it became part
of compulsory education after primary school. However, the price was the dominance of
apprenticeship practices in VET led by industry or corporates/chambers and the supportive
and general nature of vocational schools in relation to occupation and industry. The religious
and bourgeois conceptions of female Beruf as citizen and Hausfrau geared womens VET into
a system of full-time, educational vocational schools, diverging from the male
apprenticeship-dominated system (Mayer, 1998). Being the heir of continuing school has had
a long-standing impact on the role of the vocational school in German vocational education:
as a school of (occupational) citizenship, it has remained cross-occupational and general,
compensatory to the civic and academic forms of education for citizenship rather than
becoming a distinctive component in developing occupational identity and qualifications.
Despite differences, the Nordic approaches to continuing education were all influenced in the
19th century by the distinctive Nordic enlightenment, a popular-democratic movement with its
principle of folkelighed (Slumstrup et al, 1983; Gudmunssen, 1995; Jarning, 2002). However,
as in Germany, Denmark and Norway, religion had a greater influence on the definition of
female occupations and education. It has been argued that especially in Norway (Korsnes,
1997; Michelsen, 1991; 1998) the popular education movement hindered the development of
technical institutes, which would integrate technology, theory and practice and would serve
national industry. The politically most influential popular-democratic movements maintained
a focus on agricultural education.
In Norway trade, craft and manufacturing industries developed quite independently from rural
industries (Sakslind, 1998; Gudmunssen, 1995). In the technical sector, part-time schools for
apprentices (laerlingskoler, tekniske aftenskoler) were maintained by local crafts and
manufacturer associations. Gaining national independence, first from Denmark, later from
Sweden, was a shared interest among the State, church and popular-democratic movement.
106
Folk enlightenment and societal participation, promoted through folk schools and folk
high schools, were fundamental from this perspective. While the gymnasium maintained its
superior status, it increasingly became geared to preparing or complementing academic
education. According to Michelsen (1998) female teachers were initiators in developing
specific vocational continuing schools in Norway, as part of the bourgeois-feminist
movement. Female teachers had organised themselves separately from male teachers, who
were primarily from agrarian backgrounds. During the 1910s to the 1930s women tried to
establish an obligatory, practical Youth school (ungdomsskole) to continue folk school based
on pedagogical ideas of Arbeitsschule in the style of Kerschensteiner. As it was seen as part of
womens emancipation and professionalisation, the initiative received minor attention from
crafts and industry and no support from the State. It never became a real predecessor for
institutionalised vocational education (yrkeskoler), while the crafts defended their
apprentice-training system and the labour-movement prioritised development of the
comprehensive school (enhetsskole). Initial VET remained divided into fragmented local
part-time schools loosely controlled by industrial associations and into a State-controlled
school-based system. The dominance of educational programmes promoting political and
social participation remained strong and lead to the creation of comprehensive upper
secondary school during the 1970s.
In Denmark, the liberation of trade and industrialisation since the middle of 19th century took
place largely as a grass-root process, integrating peasantry and crafts in small towns. The
expansion of agro-industry, the cooperative movement and regional self-governance went
hand in hand with industrialisation. The popular-democratic movement and folkelig
enlightenment promoted continuity in collective and cooperative social and productive
activities. The crafts and technical associations took the leading role in vocational education
and in establishing the first technical institutes (tegneskoler which developed into tekniske
skoler) (Laegring, 1985; Moeller, 1991; Hentil et al., 2002). The emergence of a new type of
small stationsbyer along the railways from the 1870s, adjusted rural crafts and industries to
the guild traditions of koebstader and became crucial in establishing VET schools for
apprentices until the 1940s. Initial VET became part of wider concept of popular
(community-based) education, which integrated political, industrial and educational aims. The
same networks initiated the expansion of vocational schools, as well as later of work
camps/youth schools and production schools, as the various forms of folk education
(Laegring, 1985; Mayer, 1999; Slumstrup, 1983). The technical associations, representing
occupations and controlling school inspection and vocational teacher training, controlled the
State subsidies for technical education. The national Council for Vocational education
(Tilsynet med den tekniske Undervisning for Hndvaerkere og industridrivende), established
in 1916, recruited half of the members from working life as well as those from the State.
However, occupation-specific schools have remained subsumed into the apprenticeship
system controlled by the social partners. The establishment of Youth Schools (ungdomsskola)
from the 1930s represented a change in conceptions of VET: it was not initiated by crafts or
local actors, but by national policy-makers. Its target group was specified as 14-18 year olds
and its aim was to combat social problems and unemployment. The employment political
function of the school was indicated by its integration into other initiatives like technical
107
schools and work camps as voluntary alternatives for young people who had finished their
compulsory education. It was the duty of the municipalities to establish schools for boys and
girls to prepare them for work in most common occupational fields.
Both in Sweden and Finland crafts remained marginal compared to export (metal and
wood-processing) industry and rural industries. Popular-democratic movements united small
farmers, rural workers and the land-less people with industrial labourers and had gained
strongly political character (Kettunen, 1998; Hellspong and Lfgren, 1995). The Nordic
social-democratic ideology and the idea of comprehensive school were most influential in
Sweden since the beginning of the 20th century. The Swedish concept of folklighet may even,
in its later social-democratic versions, be influenced by the heritage from a military
super-power State, big export industry and large land-owning gentry. In Sweden, popular
education was considered the right and duty of the State, which had the mission of developing
citizens for the nation-State, into which vocational training was subsumed (Boli, 1989;
Lindgren, 1997). Instead of becoming craft and industry-led institutions, evening schools for
apprentices/trainees (Sndagsskolar which developed into Lrlingsskolar) were maintained
by municipalities and supported and controlled by the State (Larsson, 1995; Englund, 1986).
The National Board of Education (skolverstyrelse) was established for grammar schools in
1904, but since 1918 it included a department of VET for trade, crafts, industry and home
economics. Initial VET became increasingly developed through workshop schools as part of
State-supported, full-time municipal school-system (praktiska ungdomskolar which developed
into verkstadskolsystem). The initiatives were socio-political in combating unemployment and
migration of labourers, but they were also supported by modernising industry, which preferred
technological training and more advanced skills than the experiential learning in the evening
schools could provide. Other branches of VET were linked to their branch administration, but
since the department transformed into National Board of VET (yrkesskolverstyrelse) in 1943,
they gradually became integrated into vocational component of comprehensive education.
The Swedish approaches indicate the emerging self-conception of the social-democratic State
as having a privileged and progressive perception of peoples educational needs. This may be
one reason for the lack of interest in the occupational functions of school: As a matter of fact,
social democracy has not been interested in school as such, but only in how it has functioned
as an instrument in reforming society (Lindgren, 1997; p. 2). However, arguments are also
given about the importance of general education, initiated bottom-up by the agrarian people
(especially prosperous farms) because of utilitarian and pragmatic reasons, not because of
top-down implementation of mass schooling for citizens of a democratic nation-State
(Lindmark, 1996). The proportionally wider bourgeoisie in Sweden also had more interest in
gymnasium education, especially in the transmission of patterns of family-life in separate
schools for girls. Comprehensive education was a springboard, when VET was integrated in
the 1960s into a unified system of education, including administration and teacher training
(Swedish Government, 1962). Norway and, to lesser extent, Denmark accompanied Sweden
during the 1960s and the 1970s in expanding the idea of comprehensive education to upper
secondary level, even if the internal streaming of pathways continued. In Finland the
108
initiatives on youth school since the 1970s were never realised, and the distinctiveness of VET
as a form of education, despite its school-based organisation, was retained.
In Denmark and Finland vocational education became a real alternative to continuing
education: in Denmark as an integration of apprenticeship and school, controlled primarily by
industry itself, in Finland as State governed schools, controlled by industries through State
and by networks of representatives of industry, occupations, civil servants, schools and
teachers. While popular-democratic ideas were dominating all Nordic educational
programmes, the struggle against integrating vocational into comprehensive post-compulsory
school was strongest in Finland. Furthermore, though German continuing education
transformed into separate systems of dual vocational and academic education, the principle of
occupational citizenship seems to have become equally important in Germany and Finland.
8.4.
Continuing education and models of VET
The Nordic political and research discussion on continuing school has almost exclusively
concentrated on the relations between gymnasium/middle school and folk school and on the
unification of compulsory school through its academisation (e.g. Rinne, 1984; Jauhiainen,
2002; Jarning, 2002). Therefore, it has been attractive to adopt system-functional paradigms
on models of VET, which have originated from Germany and circulated and reformulated in
Europe. Following the paradigmatic German interpretations, research tends to consider VET
from the perspective of regulation, systems and institutions (Luhmann, 2002). Legislation,
financing and organisation into interest groups are criteria for recognising and differentiating
school-based and work-based education and learning. In addition, crafts and manufacturing
industry become standards, because of their crucial political and economic role in the making
of the German nation-State and economy. Work and its occupational forms have become
exclusively defined as male Beruf in the manufacturing industry. The analyses of VET interest
groups concentrate on the role of Mittelstand, on organising workers/employees and
companies/employers into social partners negotiating their interests on VET. Finally, the role
of State is reduced to a separate, bureaucratic player in the tripartite interest struggle on
regulatory power and financial obligations.
The first criterion makes it understandable why Nordic researchers tend to copy such
universalising models: the focus on systems and institutions has enforced their exclusive
interest in folk school, gymnasium and university, which all have been organised and
discussed as national issues under church or State governance (58). However, the development
of Finnish (or Nordic) VET in relation to continuing education may raise questions about the
universality of adopted models. In the formation of VET, schools were no more separate than
the State from cultural, political and economic movements, with their different
well-articulated aims and objectives concerning the future.
(58) And as part of their personal history, are closer to their life form and self-concept as well.
109
In the Finnish case, since the 19th century VET has been embedded in the projects competing
for developing industries, occupations and governance, which potentially would become
national and constitute a system (Heikkinen, 1995; 2000a; 2000b; Heikkinen et al., 1999). The
school-based character of VET was important precisely in its potential to promote industries
and the occupationalisation of work. Even with varying power and influence, the projects
were operating through administration: the ministries, departments and boards became the
headquarters for their articulation and stabilisation. The promotion and governance of VET
remained integrated in the promotion of industry in branch-ministries until the 1970s
(Annex 1 shows the position of VET in national governance). The State was engaged in
different programmes promoting industries and politics. For example, the main contributors to
the debate on continuing education the followers of the Fennoman movement representing
agricultural Finland and the proponents of industrial Finland channelled their political and
economic projects through the Board of Education and Ministry or Board of Trade and
Industry respectively.
Moreover, the Finnish word for occupation used to be elatuskeino, meaning means of
livelihood (later in the 19th century elinkeinoammatti, meaning occupation as a means of
livelihood, nowadays ammatti). For most of the population this meant, until the 20th century,
all kinds of tasks, which were recognised as necessary for independent life, in the totality of an
agrarian household. At the individual level, elatuskeino could be a craft, office or service.
Even in later conceptions of wage-labour and the individual worker, the collective aspect of
occupation remained important. For example, wage-work in a factory could be conceived as a
family occupation, and other members of the family, especially women and children, could
substitute or support the person actually contracted. In the agrarian household as a collective
enterprise, women in particular could change tasks and roles (Heikkinen, 1995; 2001;
Peltonen, 1992; Apo, 1995). In Swedish, yrke (occupation) substituted the earlier holistic
expression nring activity for livelihood or nutrition in rural household and started to refer
to specialised and individualised work (Hellspong and Lfgren, 1995). Despite the increasing
importance of occupational work, the Nordic concepts can hardly be substituted by the
concept of (male) Beruf.
In Norway and Sweden, education for the household was more closely linked to general
education and female citizenship than other areas of VET, which indicates greater similarity to
German concept of the female Beruf (Michelsen, 1998; Mjelde, 2001; Mayer, 1998). In
Finland, household and home industry were dominantly conceived as occupational parts of the
totality of rural work, later as distinctive occupations. Home industry was not only female
work: potentially it was mediating between the subproject of crafts in the projects of both
industrial and farmers Finland. Other important inputs for Finnish conceptions of work and
occupations originate from nursing and social work. They have amalgamated popular
conceptions of care in holistic production-consumption of agrarian households and the
androgynic concept of skilled work as occupation with the bourgeois idealisation of
femininity with its exclusive occupational dispositions. In Finland the principles and forms of
female-dominated occupations and VET have become comparable with the male-dominated.
Therefore, the schooling paradigm in womens VET did not indicate its integration into, but
110
occupationalisation of work and differentiation from, education for citizenship as in all VET.
The success of the project of industrial Finland since World War II promoted technical work
and occupations as ideals for all VET, but not without impacts from other occupational
branches (Henriksson, 1998; Heikkinen, 2001) (59).
The concept of middle class should also be historically and culturally contextualised: an
educationally open concept of Mittelstand could support understanding the development of
VET as a mediator between varieties of upper and lower social strata in different nationStates. Linked to this, the concept of social partners has historical importance only in
Denmark and does not even exist in the Finnish language. Often Nordic researchers claim that
the development of (technical) VET was hindered, because the middle-class was forced to
compromise with the popular-democratic movements, rooted in agrarian societies with their
socio-political programmes (Heikkinen, 1995; 1996; Korsnes, 1997; Kettunen and Rissanen,
1995; Kettunen, 1998; Michelsen, 1998). The programmes of industrial and educational
modernisation had to recognise and respect them and adjust to their needs and aims. However,
at least in Finland and Sweden, crafts, small enterprises and shopkeepers never became a
quantitatively or qualitatively crucial societal group nor made up a Mittelstand in the German
sense. On the contrary, from farmers, industrial and service workers together with civil
servants became the typical Nordic nations of middle-class, with minor interest in craft or
small entrepreneurship.
In 19th century Germany the central political role of small crafts and trade as a counterweight
to industrial workers and unions had to be adjusted to the growing importance of the large
export companies, which operated at the nation-State level. This was reflected in the tripartite
governance and organisational solutions of VET. Only in Denmark, with its small towns and
strong cooperative movement and domination of agro-industry and domestic manufacture
instead of big manufacturing export industry, was a Mittelstand integrating the traditions and
interests of agriculture and crafts developed (Moeller, 1991; Hentil et al., 2002). In Finland,
the collaboration of the large wood-processing and metal industries with the politically
important small farmer-Mittelstand was facilitated by the State; in Norway local politics and
administration was crucial in negotiating the development of the nationally fragmented
industries of sea fare, trade, fishing and wood-processing. In Sweden domestic and export
markets have both been important for national economy. Big farms, big industry and
traditional (military) gentry facilitated the development of a strong consensual State, which
promoted the ideology of a collective Mittelstand: the Swedish folks home where all citizens
become middle-class. In Nordic Mittelstand solutions, comprehensive experience and
(59) One important factor, which is marginally discussed in comparisons, having influence in differentiating the
conceptions of the occupational form of work especially during the 20th century, has been the role of
immigrant or guest labour. Narotzky (1997) emphasises the importance of cheap migrant labour for
industrial development in Germany and France, and compares it with the implications of colonial slavery
and cheap labour for the emerging divisions of work in countries like Spain, Portugal and the UK. It was
remarkable in Sweden and Germany still during the 1960s and the 1970s. The more universal principle of
occupational form of work and vocational education in Finland may thus partly be due to the homogeneity
of the people both as workers and citizens.
111
citizenship were primary, intellectual and technological progress secondary in educational

reforms.
Instead of social partnership, Norway, Finland and Sweden developed legalistic patterns of
negotiating work and VET at national level. The specific Nordic version of social democracy
adjusted itself to the agrarian, free peasantry tradition. Kettunen (1995) has shown how, from
the beginning of the 20th century, it was typical for Nordic countries to integrate the concept
of collective industrial labour to the ideals of an independent farmer and owner of ones work,
opposing these with the capitalist employer. In Finland this phenomenon was more influential,
because citizenship was traditionally rooted in the status of the farmer. This became visible in
the internationally exceptional mobilisation of labour movement around rural workers,
crofters and landless people. The politicised nature of industrial relations after national
independence and civil war (1917-18) pushed negotiations towards national legalistic,
corporative regulation of work conditions. As in Sweden and Norway, the representative,
consensual negotiations between Finnish employers and employees at local and national level
have become interconnected and moderated by the public sector.
The governing patterns in VET have been more continuous in Germany than in Nordic
countries (Deissinger, 1993). Denmark has resembled Germany in maintaining strong links
between industrial, technology and vocational education policies. In other Nordic countries
the negotiation systems and actor-networks in different policy areas seem increasingly to have
separated (Korsnes, 1997; Larsson, 1995; Heikkinen et al., 1999). Finland resembles Germany
in having looser links between VET and the ministries or departments of church and
education. While Norway and Sweden were pioneers in creating a comprehensive upper
secondary system in Europe, their lower level vocational schooling gained a more
prevocational character than in Finland. Consequently, in Norwegian and Swedish education
recognition of VET and practical learning became weaker and of lower in esteem than in
Denmark and Finland.
8.5.
Political implications
The constitutive role of educational researchers, including historians, has developed over a
period when culture, society and nation-State have become more or less synonymous and
overlapping (Wagner, 2001). However, increasingly their interpretations and narratives are
being used in varieties of transnational projects of VET. Which stories and mappings of the
world are going to have currency in transnational discourses and with which consequences?
What could be the alternatives for universalising models of VET in transnational or
cross-cultural research on vocational education?
Psychological and didactic approaches have always been attractive to educationalists and
researchers, because they enable decontextualised and universal interpretative frameworks.
There seems to be continuity in the psychological approach to different forms of education,
which are based on psychological differences among learners and learning. Whether it is
112
abilities, attitudes and dispositions or motivation, the form and mode of education should be
adjusted to the individual characteristics of the learner. Another attractive alternative are
sociological and system-functionalist approaches, which consider different forms of education
and their institutionalised modes in relation to societal and economic hierarchies and statuses.
It provides an opportunity to compare the functioning of educational pathways and institutes
across societal and economic systems, identical with nation-States (60).
However, what are identified as systems of VET may represent the hegemonic, victorious
cultural programmes which, especially since the World War II, have been joint constructors of
nation States, national economies and industries. Therefore, commitment of researchers and
policy-makers to certain models, derived from certain, selected systems of VET, may support
promotion of certain new hegemonic programmes of VET, now as joint constitutors of
transnational policies, economies and industries. A nonconformist alternative could be to
deconstruct the emergence and transformation of national systems as outcomes of
competition between cultural programmes of VET, carried out by individual, collective and
meta-collective actors striving at certain subnational, national and supranational aims. The
cultural approach propagated in this paper, conceives education as joint constitutor of culture
as projects or programmes at personal, collective and at societal levels. The differentiation of
education is due to the complexities of cultural projects, where individual growth processes
and life-courses, transformation of collective life forms and societal formations intersect. In
most European reflections on education, only polarisation between academic and vocational
forms of education are discussed. The Nordic history of education, however, reminds us of the
importance of a more complex view, where the different forms of education are considered
from the perspective of individual and collective growth processes, in relation to their political
functions (Heikkinen, 1995; Heikkinen and Sultana, 1997). This demands historicising and
contextualising reflections on the interdependences between actors, cultural programmes and
conceptions of education in subnational, national and transnational frameworks.
The debates on continuing education can be considered as confrontations between main forms
of education, which are transforming in relation to each other. In the Finnish context, one
basic form of education emerged as popular or citizenship education. It materialised as initial
education in folk schools (comprehensive) and as folk enlightenment in adult education
institutes. The basic pedagogical idea in folk education has been the promotion of
participation in the life of the family (households), community and nation-State. In the holistic
(60) Does the characterisation of models of VET do justice to Webers idea of idealtypes? Korsnes has pointed
out that Weberian idealtype is an ideational picture that is not historical reality, and absolutely not the real
reality, and that is even less suited to serve as a form into which the reality qua exemplar can be classified,
but rather is meaningful as a purely idealistic boundary-concept that reality is measured by in order to clarify
certain significant components of its empirical substantiality, which it is compared with. Such concepts are
images, consisting of interrelationships that are constructed by application of the category of the objective
possibility, that by our reality-oriented and trained imagination are judged as adequate (Korsnes, 2001).
However, could it also be that Weber struggled between political expectations about developing
classifications of (mapping) the world and his engagement in understanding the world as complex and
controversial transformations? Could idealtypes represent a compromise, apology and excuse for developing
politically exploitable interpretations?
113
conception of life, participation has included work and occupations. Another form of
education can be characterised as academic education in gymnasia and universities. The
guiding pedagogical principle has been to promote participation in, and production of, bodies
of knowledge, organised into disciplinary structures and practices. It implies transcending and
overcoming the boundaries of specific forms of life, also occupational life. Still, academic
education has also included ideas of citizenship and occupation (profession), which considers
the good of the people, communities and nation (or nations) from a more universal
perspective. Vocational education can be distinguished as a third form only in relation to the
previous ones. It has come to focus on participation in the world of work, in an occupationally
structured society, through specialised skills, technical expertise and trade, which constitute
peoples occupational identities.
A shared historical tendency, which can be recognised cross-nationally, is the penetration of
academic education into all other forms of education. However, the imperatives of economic
relevance and manufacturing of proper characters for globalising markets may furnish this
instrumental version of academic with distorted versions of vocational and folk education.
114
Annex 1
Figure 8.1: Students in apprenticeship training (1875-80: certificates) compared to
school-based VET in all branches
Apprenticeship
contracts
1840
1875
1880 (a)
1924 (a)
1930
1960 (a)
1970
1980
1990
1993
1995
*
~1 000
Percentage of
apprenticeships
in VET
~4 000
15 400
20 312
53 196
98 706
137 908
162 535
199 525
203 134
1.6
5.5
5.6
2.7
3.6
4.3
4.8
5.9
Students in
schoolish VET
1 741
220
125
250
1 179
3 159
2 687
5 157
7 235
10 025
12 719
1879, 1923 and 1992: Trade Acts/Acts on apprenticeship; the 1960s: influence from reform of apprenticeship programmes in the
1950s; until the 1960s apprenticeships were formally recognised mainly in crafts, manufacturing and retail; since the 1980s
apprenticeship is primarily adult education, which can take place in most occupational branches. In the 1990s comparisons are
difficult, since half of the previous VET were transformed to HE as polytechnics (AMK institutions).
Source:
Heikkinen, 1995, 2000a; Heikkinen and Sultana, 1997; Heikkinen et al., 1999
Figure 8.2: Schools and students in school-based VET from the 1840s until the 1910s
(registered, supported)
1840
Sch
Schools for agriculture
1850-60
St
Sch
1
St
30
Schools for forestry
1870-80
Sch
1890
St
Schools for horticulture
15
St
Sch
St
200
14
362
39
1 066
10
10
170
40
531
Schools for animal husbandry

Schools for dairy farming
Sch
1910
30
20
185
123
15
30
63
10
100
25
843
Schools for home economics

Commercial schools
50
50
120
450
30
1 975
Schools for seafaring
90
90
150
156
170
80
58
3 173
109
2 065
Schools for home industry

Vocational schools
Technical schools
15
700
23
1 900
32
2 500
35
1 286
62
3 714
70
625
689
13
1 588
30
Nursing schools
Sch =
St =
schools
students
115
Figure 8.3: Transformation of Finnish continuing education/school

Periods
Initial stage
1870s-1920
Difficult years
1921-1944
Practical school
1945-1957
Civic school
1958-1970
Comprehensive
1970-
Intermediate
(Integrative)
education 2000-
Legal
Status
Education Act 1866:

Recommendations on
continuation
Education Act 1921:

school obligation, in
different schools with
different curricula
Education Act 1943:

obligatory attendance of
continuation school
Education Act 1958: civic

school as part of tripartite
secondary education; civic,
middle, VET schools
Education Act 1970:

unification of lower
secondary education
Education Act 1998

and recommendations:
special education and
counselling part of
lifelong learning
Pedagogy
Ethical and political

education for
citizenship
Struggle between
occupational and
citizenship education
Distinctive mission as
practical and educational
youth school for
less-gifted
Individual-psychological
and societal legitimisation
of different curricula
Equal opportunities,
individualisation,
practical subjects in
curriculum
Distinctive special
pedagogy and
counselling in VET
Relation
to VET
Component in wider
projects of Finland
and Finnish industry
Controversy among
educational actors:
VET school as
potential alternative
for compulsory school
VET schools developing

distinctive pedagogy
and mission
Peaceful co-existence of
civic, vocational and
academic education
Competition with academic

lower secondary, VET
remains separate
Comprehensive school
precede VET schools,
controversy between
vocational and
academic upper
secondary
Preparatory and
compensatory
measures for
lower VET
Students
Majority of young,
victims of Civil
War 1918-
Rural youngsters,
girls in towns
Rural youngsters, urban

working class, victims
of World War II
Rural and less gifted

youngsters
Source: Heikkinen, 1995; Heikkinen and Henriksson, 2002; Heikkinen and Lamminp, 2002; Jauhiainen, 2002.
116
Poor and demotivated

learners, primarily
male youngsters
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Slumstrup, F. Grundtvigin valistusajattelun ydinksitteit. In Slumpstrup, F. et al. Grundtvigin
valistusajatukset ja meidn aikamme. Pohjoismainen Kansanopistoneuvosto: Jelling
Boktrykkeri, 1983.
Slumpstrup, F. et al. Grundtvigin valistusajatukset ja meidn aikamme. Pohjoismainen
Kansanopistoneuvosto: Jelling Boktrykkeri, 1983.
Stratmann, K. Die Berufsschule zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik: eine Analyse der
berufsschulpdagogischen Diskussion des Kaiserreichs. In Lisop, I.; Greinert, W.-D.;
Stratmann, K. (eds). Grnderjahre der Berufsschule. Berlin: BIBB, 1990.
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[The State's Official Report]. Stockholm: Swedish Government, 1962, No28 (SOU 1962:
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Wagner, P. A history and theory of social sciences. London: Sage, 2001.
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(ed.) Vocational education and culture European prospects from history and life-history.
Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 1994.
121
9.
The production school concept as Europes first

didactically guided vocational training model
Johannes Meyser
9.1.
The production school concept and modernisation
As a vocational training concept, the production school principle combines learning and work,
theory and practice, qualifications and sales-oriented production in a targeted manner. This
training precept originated in Europe. It has a long, if interrupted, tradition, but is still very
modern.
It was first established in France during the 18th century as a form of didactically conducted
vocational education and training, and, as industrialisation grew, was systematically
developed to meet the increased demand for qualified skilled workers. It was directly
influenced by the evolution and transformation of industrialisation, the structuring of
appropriate production processes and their logistics and by European society modernisation.
The French schools were extremely influential during the establishment of vocational training
institutions in Europe. Similar production schools were founded in almost all countries during
the 19th century. In the early 20th century they lost their prestige in some countries and were
partly replaced by other forms of skilled worker training. Towards the end of the century,
however, the production school model saw something of a revival and is still an applied form
of vocational training (Meyser, 1996).
Although production schools continue to train skilled workers within the context of
international vocational training schemes, (Greinert and Wiemann, 1993), advanced industrial
nations see them as the solution to higher training and educational policy expectations and
also as a means of sponsoring those disadvantaged by modernisation through change in
production techniques and economic conditions.
The production school concept is still thoroughly contemporary and a topic of current debate
(Kipp et al., 2000).
122
9.2.
The coles dArts et Mtiers in France
The evolution stages of French production schools generally correspond with those of early
industrialisation in France. The schools were the result of a programme to support trade. This
19th century programme involved economic policy in a much broader sense than the term is
used today, for its aim was to create a new middle management elite for factories and to
establish internationally competitive industry.
9.2.1.
Phase I (1780 to 1803): vanguard of vocational training according to the

production school principle
Even under the ancien rgime attempts were made to introduce the English method in
agriculture and manufacturing by means of training measures. Innovations were introduced,
machines and technicians imported, and the first steps to disseminate this new knowledge
through vocational training were taken.
In accordance with these new objectives, the Duke Franois-Alexandre Frdric
de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827) developed the project of founding a school in his
duchy at Liancourt (vicinity of Compigne/Oise) in 1780. This was to offer both theoretical
and practical training. The pupils were exclusively army orphans and the sons of soldiers. The
practical instruction took place in workshops and was given by master craftsmen from the
dukes Dragoon regiment (Day, 1987). La Rochefoucauld employed the method of relay
instruction, involving elder pupils passing on the knowledge they had accumulated to new
pupils (Artz, 1966; p. 185).
After visiting the institution which in the interim had been transformed into an cole
Nationale and been moved to Compigne in 1800 Napoleon ordered that henceforth it
should train sous-officiers pour lindustrie, contrematres pour les manufactures and chefs
dateliers.
9.2.2.
Phase II (1803 to 1815): rise of the coles dArts et Mtiers
In 1803 this school was changed into an cole dArts et Mtiers in which founders, turners,
joiners and cabinetmakers, instead of blacksmiths, smiths, saddlers and military tailors, were
trained for work in State-owned factories (Dreyfus, 1903; p. 374).
This first commercial and technical school was moved to Chlons-sur-Marne in 1806, and a
second one was founded in Angers in 1815. These schools, now the cole Nationale
Suprieure dArts et Mtiers (ENSAM), are still to be found there on their original premises.
These specialised institutes, complete with production workshops, were soon among the best
European vocational training establishments of their time. Products manufactured by pupils
were in part supplied to the State, in part sold to private individuals keen to acquire such
wares (Denkschrift ..., 1879; p. 29). The profit was sufficient for the workshops to support
123
themselves. La Rochefoucauld, who in the interim had become General Inspector of Schools,
wished above all to promote industry in France. For this reason the manufactured goods were
not to threaten private companies and were sold at around the same prices as typical
workshops charged.
9.2.3.
Phase III (1815 to 1850): consolidation of the coles dArts et Mtiers
The insecure and vacillating political situation after 1815 often posed a threat to the existence
of the coles dArts et Mtiers. In the ensuing years, however, a series of reforms were
enacted. The schools militaristic focus shifted, and the crafts orientation turned now towards
the training of mechanics and engineers for industry. The Ministry of Trade simultaneously
took over responsibility for the schools from the Ministry of the Interior. The idea of assigning
them to the Ministry of Education was never entertained.
French industry was also in increasing need of management personnel and soon the growing
number of applicants to the schools in Chlons and Angers could not be accommodated. A
third cole dArts et Mtiers therefore opened in Aix-en-Provence in 1843.
The existence of the schools was later threatened in the years after the 1848 revolution. In
1850, members of the National Assembly called for the closure of the schools. Industrialists
and academics were questioned, and the careers of school alumni investigated. The schools
supporters prevailed; it was concluded that the schools were indispensable as they trained
qualified workers who were of great worth as skilled workers, mechanics, machine operators,
designers and industrial engineers. It was maintained that the loss of these schools would be
an indescribably heavy blow to national industry (Annuaire ..., 1851; pp. 16-55). The
existence of the coles dArts et Mtiers was thus secured.
9.3.
A new European vocational training concept
The coles dArts et Mtiers were innovative in offering practical vocational training in
workshops. Learning by doing was adopted, from the traditional model of apprenticeship to
the level of a master craftsman. For the latter, however, it was subject to didactic objectives.
The dominion of economic exigencies in all forms of vocational training thus ended.
Establishing training workshops not only necessitated a change of training venue, but also
permitted an unprecedented break with the real conditions of the workplace. For this reason,
France may be considered home of the systematic, pedagogically guided, practical and
theoretical apprenticeship tuition. This was also the first time that didactic criteria were
selected and applied to practical vocational training objectives. From the outset production
was tailored to training interests. Certain company-based practices were replaced, minimised
or highlighted. The aim was to create a systematic vocational training process. Training
programmes were developed for the workshops and for specialist theoretical instruction.
124
The training course lasted three years. Entrance examinations were conducted, minimum
standards for acceptance were set and the age of course entry specified at between 15 and 17.
At the same time, trainer professionalism increased. While in the early days of the production
schools its trainers were invalids, soldiers and manual workers, the coles dArts et Mtiers
now employed engineers, master craftsmen and academically trained teachers.
The schools trained 300 pupils a year. In the workshops the principle of onsite training
prevailed, while in the classroom technical drawing, applied mathematics and occupational
knowledge were taught together with the general curriculum. The workshops were equipped
with steam-driven engines and were superior to the average facilities of modern French
companies. Practical instruction was given in four studios (for forging, casting, engine fitting
and model building). Each had a workshop director, up to three foremen and one or two
trained workers who assisted in training pupils.
By way of in-house production, tools and instruments for the various school workshops were
manufactured. These included such implements as compasses, vices, spanners, draw plates,
files and plane housings. The pupils then built pieces for machine tools and steam machinery
and, finally, foundations for heavy machinery, large cogs and cylinders for steam-driven
engines which they then assembled.
The pupils were responsible for both making and finishing the parts. Each student would take
charge of a work team. This was to prepare them for the role of supervision. At the end of
training a student was expected to be able not only to use and maintain tools, implements and
machinery, but also to understand their construction and function. Additionally, they were
expected to instruct other workers (Archives Nationales, 1863).
France had thus developed and implemented the first systematic, didactically structured
vocational training concept in Europe.
9.4.
Contextual origins of the production school concept in

France
The development of production schools as training establishments for skilled workers is

closely related to the multifaceted modernisation of French society. Here we can identify five
key factors.
9.4.1.
Late development of French industrialisation
Catching up with England, the more industrially developed nation at the time, to avoid loss of
power was a significant motive for the early foundation of the French production schools. The
intention was to encourage technical and economic expansion to reduce the English lead and
to compensate for the delay in industrialisation. If we take the share of global industrial
production as a criterion for improvement, we can see that in 1750 Englands foothold in the
125
market, 1.9 %, was only about half as large as Frances 4 % share. By 1800, England had not
only caught up with the French but was taking an increasing lead. In 1880 Englands share of
the market was 22.9 % to Frances 7.8 % (Kennedy, 1991; p. 237). The French lacked an
adaptable market, low transport costs, business and technical skills, steady cash flow and a
social and political climate that would favour mobility of personnel and resources. There was
a need for much stricter State intervention. As a consequence of the debate on the function of
the English practitioners, who were responsible for industrial progress and the
accompanying economic advantage which rendered training schemes in England superfluous,
the vocational training schools with their accompanying workshops evolved in France.
Specific training modes thus became a new production factor.
9.4.2.
Deposition of the guilds
The increasing fragmentation of both production methods and the social system led to the
dwindling significance of guilds in the late 18th century. Their internal dissolution and their
final abolition, sanctioned by the French Revolution, was a stimulus for new organisational
and institutional concepts of vocational training. Since all intermediaries between the State
and individuals had been removed (Schriewer, 1986), and as the traditional craft-trade training
forms were not competitive, the State was itself obliged to develop and realise new concepts
of vocational training.
9.4.3.
Technical and scientific progress
Entirely new machinery and materials were increasingly employed in production. This
required an unprecedented and growing supply of vocational and technical training which
could no longer be furnished by experience alone and en passant during practice. In the early
19th century the onus was on applying new, didactically guided training concepts which
replaced simple learning by imitation. The application of science to technology, in which
France was by this time world leader, led to the application of such values to vocational
training, systemisation and the inclusion of theory in vocational instruction. At the same time
a structured, practice-based form of training was proving more and more indispensable. The
foundation of the coles dArts et Mtiers fulfilled both requirements. The subsequent
transformation of early production schools into State-run technical institutes could take its
lead from the established colleges for engineers (cole Militaire, cole des Ponts et
Chausses, cole des Mines, cole Polytechnique).
9.4.4.
The philanthropic movement
Efforts to instigate pedagogical reform in the late 18th century were mostly influenced by the
Enlightenment, which stressed humanistic ideals and a scientific world view. Reason,
criticism, freedom of thought and religious tolerance were to replace the absolute authority of
Church and State, moral prejudice and corporate privileges. This involved, for the first time,
126
recognising the individual and the social potential of systematic education. The philanthropic,
utilitarian and industry-oriented concepts laid particular stress on the degree of common
utility of a thus-educated individual and explicitly referred to the fields of work and
occupation.
La Rochefoucauld drew on the growing German philanthropic tradition of pedagogical
development (Basedow, Salzmann, Trapp, Campe, Pestalozzi, Simon, Iselin, Schweighuser).
His emphasis on a clear vocational pedagogical approach exceeded even this conception.
However, the essence of his intentions to promote integration may be seen in the inclusion of
the socially disadvantaged (such as military orphans) in society by means of vocational
training. The socially integrative function of production schools is still partly apparent,
particularly in Danish institutions.
9.4.5.
Personal influence of La Rochefoucauld
The tenacity, rigorousness and influence of La Rochefoucauld over almost half a century was
one of the most significant factors in the development of the coles dArts et Mtiers. As a
member of the French nobility, incumbent in top political positions, he was able to provide
huge support for the founding of the schools. He had contact with the leading figures of the
day (including Young, Voltaire, Diderot, dAlembert, Condorcet, Quesnay, Turgot) and thus
had access to contemporary findings and thinking in agriculture, philosophy, sociology,
education and economics, which he wished to disseminate in France. In England he gained
familiarity with modern production methods and machinery and visited factories for days on
end. On returning from the US he introduced smallpox immunisation in France and reformed
the prison service. He learned about pedagogical and philanthropic concepts on his travels in
Germany and Switzerland.
La Rochefoucauld left a lasting impression on commercial and technical development in
France and its territories, and was instrumental in the fight against poverty and in improving
training and social conditions in France. He created an extensive welfare system for his
workers, which included support for the unemployed and the old and free medical care (Day,
1987; p. 70). In cooperation with Benjamin Delessert he created the first savings bank of
France and was the first president of the Caisse dpargne et de Prvoyance de Paris
(Primault, 1988; p. 120). His endeavours thus even shaped the accumulation of capital, which
was a vital prerequisite for industrialisation of the country. His vocational training programme
was hence part of an extensive system of progressive measures.
127
9.5.
Objectives and realisation of the production school concept

in Europe during the 19th century
During the 19th century, production schools appeared throughout Europe within the context of
State-promoted free enterprise and the decline of the guilds. The rise of industry, the growth
of national markets and an increase in international competition led to symptoms of decay
among the old production and qualification systems. Craft-trade apprenticeships were no
longer appropriate to the times and were in a serious state of crisis. This lent strength to the
foundation of production schools. Three motives were decisive:
Motive
Function of production schools
Crisis anticipation
Social integration
Stabilisation of commerce
Skilled worker training
Industrial development
Training of a technical elite
These three motives for the founding of production schools adopted their own practical
expression, which in turn generated typical structures that can still to be found in modern
production school approaches.
9.5.1.
Production schools as crisis anticipation
Production schools had the general effect of combating unemployment and poverty among
large sections of the population and of integrating people disadvantaged by modernisation into
society. To these ends, schools for weaving, basket-making, wickerwork and
lace-making, etc., were founded, all of which were designed to promote household diligence
and household industry.
9.5.2.
Production schools and the reform of craft-trade training
These institutions chiefly intended to stabilise threatened craft trades by providing them with
qualified personnel. Such training centres were created for training artisans such as
cordwainers, carpenters, smiths, ironmongers, and watchmakers. They also supported artistic
crafts and particularly rare professions such as musical instrument construction, ivory and
artistic carving, coral and meerschaum-working, glass-blowing and pottery, etc. Such
institutions, like the ones mentioned above for combating poverty, established themselves
more solidly in regions where the infrastructure was weak and industrialisation could hardly
be expected even in the long term.
128
9.5.3.
Production schools and elite training
Production schools of this kind were model enterprises equipped with the latest machinery
and appliances and intended as examples to encourage development in industrial plants. They
converged in areas with insufficient technically and organisationally progressive businesses.
They were intentionally created where significant technological and structural change in
production methods were required and where a more traditional training approach could not
meet demand. They were generally designed to train several hundred pupils a year.
They grew up in economically active regions or their vicinity. In these areas it was possible to
recruit workers, acquire contracts, find employment for former pupils as foremen and to
optimise the technological and organisational practical influence of the school. Such methods
most successfully fulfilled the goal of accelerating industrialisation with the help of the
production schools.
9.6.
Production schools and power hierarchies in Europe
The State had a direct interest in technological training in the 19th century, and considered it a
sign of national, military and economic prowess. In the competition between European nations
it was undoubtedly a goal of government influence (Flora, 1973). The French production
school concept had enormous impact on other European countries. Like France, powers such
as Russia, Austro-Hungary and Germany, were at risk of losing position to England (and
France in its wake) if they should fail to introduce training measures. The relative tardiness of
the individual countries can be noted and observed under the criterion of economic strength
and in State interaction within European political and military power structures (Lundgreen,
1973; p. 38). Shares of world industrial production between 1830 and 1900 are given here as
means of comparison (Kennedy, 1991; p. 237):
(%)
World industrial production
1830
1900
Great Britain
9.5
18.5
Russia
5.6
8.8
France
5.2
6.8
German States/Germany
3.5
13.2
Austria-Hungary
3.2
4.7
During industrialisation, the balance of power swayed in favour of Great Britain. The
relatively stable pentarchy of European powers that had existed since 1815 had crumbled
(Kennedy, 1991; p. 299). Russia, France, Austria and, to a lesser degree, Germany were called
to develop training schools with training workshops as a substitute for the missing
industrialisation. This would promote self-sufficient industrial growth and ensure the future of
these countries as major powers.
129
9.7.
Production schools and instructional workshop method
In the second third of the 19th century, Victor Karlovich Della-Vos (1829-1890) developed
the so-called instructional workshop method at the Moscow Imperial Technical School.
Linking workshops with technical schools in the form of factories was already familiar,
largely thanks to the coles dArts et Mtiers. These had already been established in Moscow.
However, the complete separation of basic training from the realm of production for these
purposes was completely innovative (Ploghaus, 2003). This facilitated almost complete and
hitherto unknown application of didactic objectives to vocational training (cf. the essay by
Wiemann in this volume). Learning goals could be determined precisely and more easily
monitored. Specialised training, however, mainly took place via the actual production of
process.
Combining the instructional workshop method or basic and specialist vocational training
permitted exceptionally effective workshop instruction. The production and sale of goods
manufactured by pupils had hitherto been a natural procedure, and this practice continued
after the introduction of the instructional workshops method. The production school principle
and the instructional workshop method are therefore closely related.
9.8.
The spread of production schools in the 19th century
The instructive method with its stress on training in productive workshops along the lines of
the French model and the affiliated instructional workshop method (Mthode Della-Vos) were
presented to a wide international public at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna. The World
Exhibitions in Philadelphia in 1876 and Paris in 1878 also gave considerable attention to
vocational training and contributed to the dissemination of the production school concept and
the instructional workshop method. Indeed, by 1920, specialised institutes with workshops
had been founded everywhere in Europe where industrial potential was to be accompanied by
such measures.
France founded new commercial and technical production schools after the loss of the war
against Germany in 1870/71. By the early 20th century an extensive school-based vocational
training system on several levels was in place. These numbered the six coles dArts et
Mtiers, four coles Nationales Professionnelles and 70 coles Pratiques. We must also
mention the 450 coles Primaires Suprieures in this context, which generally only furnished
basic commercial and technical education (Day, 1987; p. 43 f).
Russias defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856) finally demonstrated the superiority of the
western powers. The lack of capital, low consumer demand, a tiny middle class, the huge
dimensions of the land and its extreme climate, combined with an autocratic, centralised state,
wary of innovation, had handicapped industrial development in the country and finally
crippled its military capacity. Following the French lead, Moscows and St. Petersburgs
Imperial Technical Schools were supplemented by intermediate and basic technical schools.
130
By 1900, 18 intermediate and 20 basic schools had been created. In addition 19 craft-based
commercial schools were founded. These focused on training locksmiths, blacksmiths, metal
turners, founders, model casters, carpenters, turners, and model carpenters. A total of
13 craftsman apprentice schools and 30 basic trades schools were created, which were run
according to the production school concept (Holzmller, 1902).
Austro-Hungarian political policy was dictated by the pentagon of the European balance of
power (Kennedy, 1991; p. 256 et seq.). Any alteration of the economic and concomitant
political hierarchy of the other powers jeopardised the countrys position. For this reason a
concerted effort to keep pace was made by constructing technical schools. Training in
connection with practical instruction in school workshops became characteristic of Austrian
vocational schools. By 1912, 30 Staatsgewerbeschulen (State Trade Schools) with training
workshops had been created across the country. The combination of theoretical and practical
instruction is still a component of these institutions, now known as Bundesgewerbeschulen or
Federal Trade Schools. In addition, 220 specialised institutes had been founded by 1912 to
replace apprenticeships to master craftsmen. These also incorporated production workshops
(Grner, 1967, p. 125).
In Germany the production school principle never attained the same significance as it did in
centrally governed countries such as France and Russia. The business interests of private
German companies led to the establishing of company-based training workshops, and thence,
in the early 20th century, to the adoption of the production school principle by industry itself.
This in turn suppressed State-run specialised institutes offering full qualifications (Grner,
1977). There was, furthermore, no uniform development in the individual States. If we
compare the two largest States, we can see that Prussia was late and tentative in introducing
specialised institutes with workshops. This only took place in the shadow of the
apprenticeship crisis and the training workshop issue of the 1870s. Bavaria, conversely,
was more lastingly influenced by the French and Austrian workshop-based specialised
training schools. It introduced the production school principle much earlier and much more
extensively. In both States, production schools were introduced for modern, industrial training
in mechanical engineering and metal-working. At the same time, technical schools with
workshops were introduced for some endangered craft trades and as a means of combating
poverty.
Many other European countries also introduced the production school concept. In the face of
high-quality French exports, the generalised introduction of training schools and public
training workshops was the subject of debate in Switzerland from 1880 onwards. To this day
some 50 production schools train around 4000 pupils annually (in total approximately 2 % of
all Swiss apprentices) particularly in the francophones cantons as electricians, engineers,
precision engineers, dressmakers, graphic designers and gardeners, etc. They train the majority
of workers in some occupations. This is true of violinmakers (100 %), potters (around 85 %),
precision engineers (around 70 %) and watchmakers (around 60 %). These public training
workshops receive some State funding and school subsidies, but also create revenue by
selling goods they themselves produce (Gonon and Mller, 1982).
131
Belgium, and the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Romance countries founded specialist
schools equipped with production workshops in the 19th century. These, however, did not
always attempt to train industrial managers, but, instead, were oriented towards a general
education with socially integrative goals.
Staff continuity in organising and managing the sponsoring establishments was of supreme
importance in establishing and maintaining production schools. La Rochefoucauld
(1747-1827) in France; Della-Vos (1829-1890) in Russia; Dumreicher (1845-1908) and Wilda
(1838-1907) in Austria; and Bcher (1847-1930) and Reuter (1838-1911) in Germany were
outstanding and influential personalities, capable of developing the schools over many years
and in the face of considerable resistance.
9.9.
Decline and revival of the production school principle in the

20th century
While the foundation of production schools in the 19th century focused on training and
educating a technical elite of skilled workers, in the 20th century the industrialised nations
were primarily concerned with establishing broad training models to qualify a large number of
skilled workers. Production schools did not really suit this goal.
9.9.1.
Decline
The continuing worker demand in industry and the accompanying growth in productivity had
eliminated social crises and led to an increase in the real income of those disadvantaged by
modernisation. For this reason few production schools were created in the early 20th century,
and many of those founded in the 19th were not able to safeguard their existence in the long
term. They were merely symptoms of transition.
Some of the specialist and commercial schools with workshops that had been founded to train
a skilled worker elite in the modern industrial sector managed, however, to persist. The
Metalworkers School in Winterthur (Switzerland) and the Vocational School for the Metal
Industry in Iserlohn (Germany) still offer above-average specialised vocational training. In
addition, some production schools founded in the last century to train people for rare
professions such as violinmaking, wood sculpting, carving and watchmaking have survived,
particularly in Germany and Switzerland. Equally, a good number of the schools have since
become engineering schools, as is the case with the coles dArts et Mtiers in France.
Broadly speaking, however, most production schools lost their relevance in the 20th century.
This was also a direct result of widespread adaptation of the instructional workshop method
that was becoming the prevalent form of vocational learning and was considered the typical
industrial training principle.
132
9.9.2.
Revival
Even now the production school principle, having over time assumed a variety of forms, is
accredited with having played a special role during the structural transformation of production
processes. Indeed, a second wave of production schools has appeared since the 1970s and the
1980s. These establishments are largely motivated by the following factors:
(a) reaction to structural changes in industrial production;
(b) minimisation of training expenditure;
(c) industrial training in developing countries;
(d) integration of the disadvantaged.
The last few years have witnessed the emergence of socially integrative models as well as
schools training a technical elite.
A geographical divide is nonetheless apparent. In industrialised nations, new production
schools are almost exclusively socially integrative. Denmark, for example, has constructed a
broad production school system, and many other countries are exploiting the possibilities of
motivating pupils which the production school system offers.
Comprehensive, professional, didactical elaboration of the production school principle has
hitherto only been conducted in developing countries. This has produced some of the most
modern establishments for training a technical elite (Greinert and Wiemann, 1993). This fact
confirms the hypothesis that we can respond to the need to modernise not only by means of
new technology, but also by developing modern training strategies. This will not necessarily
involve taking predecessors as models; it is more a matter of developing or modifying
concepts which offer the possibility of more rapid industrial growth.
133
Annex 1
Figure 9.1: The cole de Mtiers in La Rochefoucaulds duchy
Photo: J. Meyser
Figure 9.2: The founder of the coles dArts et Mtiers: Duke Franois-Alexandre Frderic
de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827).
Source: Dreyfus, F. 1903, p. 1
Figure 9.3: The Liancourt coat of arms with the emblem of the coles dArts et Mtiers.
Source: Bulletin de la Socit Archologique,

Histoire et Gographique de Creil et sa Rgion.
January 1988, No 139, p. 27.
134
Figure 9.4: Pupils working in the smithy at the cole dArts et Mtiers in Chlons-surMarne, 1850.
Source: Primault et al., 1988; p. 300.
Figure 9.5: Portal decoration at the cole Nationale dArts et Mtiers in Paris. Art and
commerce meet.
Photo: J. Meyser
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Ludz, P. Ch. (ed.) Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte. Opladen: 1973, p. 294-317.
Gonon, Ph.; Mller, A. ffentliche Lehrwerksttten im Berufsbildungssystem der Schweiz.
Luzern: 1982.
Greinert, W.-D.; Wiemann, G. Produktionsschulprinzip und Berufsbildungshilfe. Analyse und
Beschreibungen. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1993. 2nd ed.
Grner, G. Die Entwicklung der hheren technischen Fachschulen im deutschen
Sprachgebiet. Braunschweig: Westermann, 1967.
Grner, G. Modell Iserlohn. Die Berufsbildende Schule, 1977, Vol. 29, p. 724-734.
Holzmller, G. Das technische Schulwesen. In Schmid, K.-A. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. Stuttgart: 1902, Vol. 5, Dep. 3.
Kennedy, P. Aufstieg und Fall der grossen Mchte. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
1991.
Kipp, M. et al. (eds). Produktionsorientierung und Produktionsschulen. (Dokumentation der
Beitrge zu den 11. Hochschultagen Berufliche Bildung 2000 in Hamburg: Berufsbildung
zwischen innovativer Programmatik und offener Umsetzung, Vol. 19). Bielefeld: 2000.
Lundgreen, P. Bildung und Wirtschaftswachstum
19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1973.
im
Industrialisierungsprozess
des
Meyser, J. Die berufspdagogische Genese des Produktionsschulprinzips. Von den

Ursprngen im 18. Jahrhundert zur aktuellen Situation. Frankfurt: Lang, 1996.
Ploghaus, G. Die Lehrgangsmethode in der berufspraktischen Ausbildung: Genese,
internationale Verbreitung und Weiterentwicklung. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 2003.
Primault, J. et al. (eds). Livre dor. Bicentenaire des coles d`arts et mtiers. Bordeaux: Paris:
1988. 2nd ed.
Schriewer, J. Intermedire Instanzen, Selbstverwaltung und berufliche Ausbildungsstrukturen
im historischen Vergleich. Zeitschrift fr Pdagogik, 1986, Vol. 32, p. 69-90.
136
10. Lehrgangsausbildung (61): a European

prototype of a universal industry-based
training method
Gnter Wiemann
One only needs to glance at the list of objects in this
collection or scrutinise the exhibited models to convince
oneself that the apprentice who performs all tasks and
thus the entire programme under the teachers
supervision will become acquainted with all the skills of
this trade in the most rational way. It is clear that such
systematic training makes it easy for the teacher to
monitor the apprentice and assess his progress. The
teacher merely has to check which pupil has satisfactorily
executed a particular programme task, and then
demonstrate and explain the skills the trainee needs to
master the next one. The excessive number of pupils in
the learning workshop does not cause problems or
overtax the teacher. It is also impossible for an apprentice
to have been working for several years in the workshop
without knowing how to drill or gouge something,
despite having come into contact with file and chisel.
Two dates, one didactic idea. In 1868 the Director of the
Moscow Imperial Technical School, Victor Karlowich
Della-Vos, inventor of the sequential method, uttered
these remarkable sentiments. In 1873 this learning model
was presented at the World Exhibition in Vienna and
soon spread among Europes training centres. A century
later, in 1973, the German Federal Institute for
Vocational Training launched its first elementary metal
training course, which was structured exactly along the
lines of this pattern. In 2003, 130 years after this essay
was written, several hundred courses across Europe
evidently adhere to the principles expounded in 1868.
(61) A training course based on an instructional step-by-step training manual.
137
10.1. The rise of industry specific training

For reasons of optimal capital exploitation alone, big industry emerging at the end of the
19th century had to address the key issue of how to recruit skilled workers for its production
plants and to train them to meet industrial requirements. This involved attracting workers
from craft trades and agricultural enterprises who no longer made the grade because of their
technological, organisational and social deficits. It called for a training strategy which used
relevant organisational and didactic models to resolve the contradiction between traditional,
contextual and situation-based learning and the systematic operations needed for mass
production of high-quality industrial goods (Greinert, 1999).
Industrial production systems mastery of technology and work organisation called for a
type of skilled worker which the labour market could not supply. They required a worker
elite, a cadre of the old school with inter-occupational qualifications, extremely versatile and
permanently willing to adapt to new demands.
We can formulate the following learning goals for the leading industry, heavy engineering
and locomotive building at the turn of the 20th century (Schwarze, 1918). Skilled workers had
to be able to:
(a) manufacture high-quality items such as machinery, equipment and tools with
hitherto-unheard-of precision for serial production of interchangeable parts, and help
develop new models and prototypes; the learning goal is vocational competence;
(b) control complex production processes for standardised and normed mass goods as
machine operators, fitters, foremen or master craftsmen in a senior position and help
maintain and repair machinery; the learning goal is process competence;
(c) accept the socioeconomic rationale of the production department and the company
through their work practices and loyal conduct and make a significant contribution to
reducing labour costs through quality awareness and frugality; the learning goal is social
competence (Wiemann, 2002a).
These learning goals, which were set for Germany, mirror the standard learning objectives of
Europes other industrialised nations.
Modernisation of vocational training in industry generated two major developments in the
organisation of learning which are still relevant today:
(a) stratification:
(i)
level one: foundation. School-based learning at a location away from normal

operations for systematic acquisition of basic, practical vocational knowledge vital
for a particular occupational sector (e.g. metalworking) under instruction from a
full-time, trained educator.
138
(ii) level two: specialised vocational training. Situational learning for acquisition of
practical knowledge at in-company workplaces in authentic production structures
under the tutelage of part-time, company trainers.
(b) course-based training; to optimise learning efficiency, speed and measurement of
achievement, practical knowledge from one discipline is divided into individual learning
sequences which are structured into courses of increasing difficulty.
10.2. What a skilled worker has to learn

A skilled worker must exhibit exceptionally complex practical knowledge to perform a task
after solving the problem it poses effectively (Figure 10.1). He/she must:
(a) master the technical structure of an occupational field (metalworking) and be able to link
work procedures (e.g. turning) with the necessary aids (e.g. tools and machinery) and
materials (e.g. sheet metal, structural steel); the learning goal is vocational competence;
(b) master the operational structure, be able to plan and execute the task in accordance with
objectives and assess its performance and quality; the learning goal is process
competence;
(c) know and master the social structure of the corporate environment and the work
organisation and be able to help solve technological, organisational and interpersonal
problems; the learning goal is social competence.
139
Figure 10.1: Conception of the practical knowledge a skilled worker typically requires to
solve a complex task
by NETWORKING
OCCUPATIONAL PROBLEM-SOLVING
WORK
ORGANISATION
SOCIAL
PRACTICAL
KNOWLEDGE
STRUCTURE
OPERATIONAL
STRUCTURE
SOCIAL
COMPETENCE
WORK
COOPERATION
WORK
PLANNING
PROCESS
COMPETENCE
TECHNICAL STRUCTURE
WORK
ASSESSMENT
WORK
PARTICIPATION
INSTRU
MENTS
WORK
PERFORMANCE
MATERIALS
WORK
PROCESSES
In traditional operations, e.g. in craft trades, apprentices acquire vocational competences

through imitative learning processes, by observing, attempting and copying while ways are
found to fill entire customer orders. This approach has considerable advantages. It is rooted in
practice and takes place under authentic working conditions. Apprentices learn to incorporate
customer wishes at an early stage, to observe the market, to improvise and to work quickly
and independently.
However, it also has grave disadvantages. High dependence on customer orders and company
specialisation often makes training too ad hoc, incomplete and, of necessity, unsystematic.
Industry at the turn of the 20th century had different expectations of future skilled workers.
The new system required new directions in qualifying and socialising the next generation.
Figure 10.1 portrays the exceptional complexity of solving challenging tasks by application of
a workers practical knowledge. The structural principle is of carving rationalised vocational
learning. This complex technological and socioeconomic knowledge was broken down into
140
individual learning sequences and structured into courses of increasing difficulty (example in
Figure 10.2). Apprentices now had to complete the entire course step by step, i.e.
consecutively, in a linear fashion, under supervision, until they had a perfect command of the
repertoire.
However, it did not merely involve direct mastery of skills. The sequential, taylorised learning
scheme also contained a secret curriculum, employing a didactic combination of
qualification and socialisation to prepare young apprentices swiftly for the
socio-psychological hardships of modern industrial jobs.
Figure 10.2: Basic course in metals (Deutscher Ausschuss fr Technisches Schulwesen,
German Committee for Technical Education, 1936)
NB: This course clearly shows the fundamental principle of sequentialisation, with a linear structure of workpieces (e.g. channel section =
filing; spherical button = forming by turning), organised in ascending order of the difficulty they pose to the acquisition of practical
knowledge, objectively and in line with learning psychology.
The status of sequentialisation of working knowledge in vocational didactics becomes

clearer when we consider the history of occupational learning. Its structure remained stable for
centuries until this approach ushered in a new era.
The following focuses on this nucleus of modernisation. Its full significance only became
evident, after unusual transfer processes spread it throughout the entire industrialised world.
141
10.3. Russian origins

Such a fundamental didactic shift from imitative to sequential vocational learning raises the
question of how the original decision came about. Whose idea was this, and what motives
prompted the initiator? After years of lengthy ideological and scientific debate, Ploghaus
appears to have found a plausible answer to this question (Ploghaus, 2003). Della-Vos,
Director of the Moscow Imperial Technical School, drafted the rudiments of this idea in 1868,
when he decided to introduce a compulsory work placement for his engineering students to
compensate for their lack of practical experience before starting studies (Figures 10.4 and
10.5). Students had to complete six sequential courses in wood-turning, model carpentry,
forging, metal-turning, mechanics and mould-making. Course sequences were based on job
and task analyses from various occupational fields. This form of vocational learning gained
international renown at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna under the name Russian
system.
Figure 10.3: Victor Karlowich Della-Vos (1829-1890)
142
Figure 10.4: Wood-turning course
Source: Moscow Imperial Technical School; KRATKU OTCED technical drawing, 1892
Figure 10.5: Turning Course
Source: Moscow Imperial Technical School; KRATKU OTCED technical drawing, 1892
143
The courses in the metal field have dictated the structure of all curricular advances (also for
other technical disciplines). They were constructed to meet three learning goals:
(a) vocational competence:
(i)
sequentialisation of reshaping knowledge: knowledge of resistance, such as filing,

sawing, thread cutting, drilling, turning, etc.;
(ii) complexification of construction knowledge: knowledge of joining, such as riveting,

screwing, pinning, gluing, soldering, welding, etc, for stationary and moving
systems.
(b) process competence
(i)
sequentialisation of planning knowledge:
knowledge of symbolisation, such as sketching, drawing, calculating,

measuring, etc.;
knowledge of quality, such as form and measurement accuracy, surface quality,

function testing by measurement and assessment, tracing and punching, etc.
(ii) complexification of practical knowledge: knowledge of integration, recognition of

connections: knowledge of planning, resistance, construction, symbolisation and
quality.
(c) social competence:
(i)
sequentialisation of social behaviour:
learning orderliness by practising cleanliness, economising, obedience, etc.;
learning responsibility by practising precision, self-control and self-assessment

to produce high-quality work.
(ii) consolidation of overall knowledge: learning relationships between operating

functions and procedures.
144
Figure 10.6: Foundation metal course (Italy, 1900)
Source: Curti, 1992
The original selection of work tasks, e.g. for the first courses in Russia (Figures 10.4 and
10.5), had only to serve as exercises. Apprentices often found them pointless, and for this
reason many educators criticised them sharply. In many cases this led to purpose-oriented,
usable work pieces.
Course units can be divided into:
(a) work tasks without apparent relevance, i.e. lacking economic and motivational value,
practice-based work tasks:
(i)
simple work tasks, such as completing die, channel section, drilling plate
(Figure 10.13);
(ii) complex work tasks, such as making rivet and screw connections;
(b) directly relevant work tasks, i.e. with economic and motivational value, functional work
tasks;
(i)
simple functional tasks, involving tools such as hammer, square, pair of compasses,
callipers (Figure 10.6);
(ii) complex functional tasks, with tools such as coping saw (Figure 10.9), vices
(Figures 10.7 and 10.11).
145
Figure 10.7: P. N. Subenko: Working diagram of assembly and clamping tools (Moscow
Technical University 1991)
Figure 10.8: Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Swenden 1902
146
Figure 10.9: Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Finland 1958
Figure 10.10: Technical drawings from metalworking courses example: Israel 1987
147
Figure 10.11: Institute for Research on Qualification and Training of the Austrian Employers
Association (IBW), Vienna 1985
148
10.4. Transfer in Germany and in Europe

The educational principle of reducing didactic problems by sequentialising complex practical
knowledge established itself as the Russian System. Following its unveiling at the 1873 World
Exhibition in Vienna, the first transfer phase took it to Austria-Hungary (Komotau, 1874),
Prussia (Iserlohn, 1879), England (London 1880-82) and the US (Boston 1876) (Ploghaus,
1984).
A second transfer phase at the turn of the 20th century is evident. Courses in metalworking
and electrical engineering appear in the state rail system and in major enterprises, e.g.
Schuckert (Nuremberg 1890), MAN (Augsburg 1892), Borsig (Berlin 1898), Krupp (Essen
1899), Siemens and Schuckert (Berlin 1903), Siemens and Halske (Berlin 1908), Voith
(Heidenheim 1910), Loewe (Berlin 1912), Bosch (Stuttgart 1913), AEG (Berlin 1915).
Founding of the Deutschen Ausschu fr Technisches Schulwesen (German Committee for
Technical Education, DATSCH) by the Association of German Mechanical Engineers, the
Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten (Association of German Engineering Institutions)
and a number of other societies marks a third transfer phase (Berlin 1908). Initially the
committee focused on vocational training standardisation issues but soon became involved in
designing courses. The first training course for apprentice mechanics, which was based on the
1916 AEG course, was introduced in 1919.
This course comprised a folder with drawings, a handbook for trainers, a printed curriculum,
printed explanatory notes and large-format charts showing right and wrong. It literally wrote
VET history. All subsequent courses organised by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour
Front), the Deutsche Luftfahrtindustrie (German Aviation Industry), the Reichsinstitut fr
Berufsausbildung in Handel und Gewerbe (Reich Institute for Vocational Training in Trade
and Commerce, which evolved from the Deutsche Ausschuss fr das technische Schulwesen
[German Committee for Technical Education] in 1939), the Arbeitsstelle fr Betriebliche
Berufsausbildung (Centre for In-Company Vocational Training) in the post war period, and
the Federal Institute for Vocational Training bore its hallmarks. GDR training courses issued
by the Deutsches Zentralinstitut fr Berufsausbildung (German Central Vocational Training
Institute) were also highly indebted to it. The basic concept has also been embraced by courses
in other occupational fields such as house carpenter, skilled concrete worker, joiner, etc.
The European processes of course transfer based on the Russian System have not yet been
investigated systematically. Around 130 metalworking training curricula from around the
world (approximately two thirds from Europe, Figure 10.12) were compiled by the Troika
research project, to analyse and interpret the transfer processes. The project will concentrate
on the motives and pressures which triggered such remarkable propagation in Europe and
inspired a comparable trend in the vocational training of so-called developing countries after
1945.
149
Figure 10.12: Transfer of the Russian system to western Europe: metalworking training
courses analysed to date
Germany excluding GDR (from 1894 approx. 60 courses)

German Democratic Republic (1951, 1952, 1953, 1959)
England (1903, 1966, 1967, 1967)
Finland (1903, 1957, 1958, 1958, 1986)
Italy (1875, 1881, 1883, 1889)
The Netherlands (1975)
Austria (1932, 1983, 1986)
Poland (1987)
Russia (1892, 1984, 1991)
Sweden (1902, 1967, 1971, 1973. 1982)
Switzerland (1963, 1970, 1973, 1990)
Spain (1984)
Hungary (1979, 1981)
Israel (1987)
Turkey (1993)
Requested: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania
Source: Wiemann, 2002b
We could maintain that European experts chiefly encountered the Russian System at trade
fairs, exhibitions and congresses (take the example of the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna).
Its presentation and functionality would have been convincing despite language barriers. We
often hear the statement, Vocational trainers are the best plagiarists! This could be one
explanation for this proliferation. Course translations could also have been instrumental. For
150
example, German courses were translated into Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, Arabic,
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian and Thai. However, we must dig deeper to find a plausible
explanation for the transfers.
The reason for the swift and global dissemination of the training course concept might have
been the symbiosis of function and interests:
(a) didactic symbiosis; didactic acceptance stems from the courses truly inspired
pedagogical construction, the symbiosis of training and socialisation, the systematic and
monitored acquisition of industrial practical knowledge and the inculcation of
psychosocial behaviour which complies exactly with the demands of the production
system;
(b) Socio-political symbiosis; socio-political acceptance stems from the fundamental
harmony of the companys interest in gaining competent skilled workers through this
form of training with apprentices interest in improving their job opportunities and social
status;
(c) Practical symbiosis; practical acceptance stems from the courses unusual simplicity.
Training personnel can handle the prepared course material confidently and fairly easily
(without lengthy preparatory study). Apprentices perceive the course as a transparent
learning programme which will lead reliably to the desired outcome.
10.5. Key fossils

Continued advances in analysis and comparison will enable us to make more precise
statements on the motives and pressures behind the introduction of courses into the structure
of the relevant vocational training system. However, we can comment more knowledgeably on
the sources which the various course users have exploited. Methodologically, we can search
for key didactic fossils which can provide information on course origins (Wiemann, 2002b).
Key fossils are work tasks which courses for mechanical engineers, turners, millers,
plumbers, smiths, etc. have employed regularly since their infancy. Typical examples include
functional tasks such as low angle, compasses, prick punch, plumb line and coping saw, and
practice tasks such as die, channel section and parallel clamp (Figures 10.13 and 10.14).
151
Figure 10.13: Original, typical key didactic fossils in metalworking courses

Die work task, first featured in the Moscow Imperial Technical School course (1873) and Kniglich-Preussischen Eisenbahnverwaltung
(Royal Prussian Rail Administration) teaching workshops (1878).
Channel section work task, first featured in the Deutsche Mechanikerschule (German Technical School) filing course in Glashtte (1926),
didactically validated in courses of the Staatliche Fachschule fr Kleineisen - und Stahlindustrie (State Institute for the Ironmongery and
Steel Industry) Schmalkalden (around 1930).
Parallel clamp work task, first featured in courses of the Allgemeinen Elektricitts Gesellschaft, AEG Berlin (1916).
Figure 10.14: Key didactic fossil; statistics
Source: Wiemann., 2002b
152
Figure 10.15: Didactic Key Fossil example: V-block (London 1966), milling course, training
with machine tools (to date we have found 28 instances)
The statistical overview shows constant recycling of work tasks from previous courses. This
no doubt stems from the reliability of these tasks rather than the instructors lack of
imagination, as is often claimed. Study of more recent courses reveals the die (e.g. in
Switzerland), the channel section (e.g. in the Peoples Republic of China) and inclusion in
project-based work tasks (e.g. in Austria, Figure 10.11).
153
Learning
goals
tti
ng
hing
P unc
Dr
p in
C op
in g
saw
R oughing file
Bastard file
File card
Filing
G ro
ov
c h is in g
el
Pa
r
c h t in g
is e
l
Prick
punch
W orking
K now ledge
M easuring
Instrum ents
C lam ps
ters
Le t e r s
b
Nu m p s
m
Sta
Tw
i
V - st d
D r b lo rill
ill
in g c k
o il
lam
ping
Source: ITB, 1966
in g
G ro
ch is o v e
e ll in
g
c h S pl
is e i t
lli
ng
Quality
know ledge
Fi
in k
g
or
Sc
in g
ill
in
nk
Saw
Resistance
know ledge
Decreasing
sequentiality
g
p in
s
am
C l v ic e
de
Increasing
sequentiality
S ta m
ing
r
n te
Me a
suri
ng
Glu
W ork safety
Cleanliness
Orderliness
Construction
know ledge
in g
ubb
Si
Co
Increasing
com plexity
t in g
T hread
cutting
er
eam
Sc
s p re w i
an
n e ng
r
R iv e
Thread drill
Threading die
W ork place:
Vice
nin
R iv e
ts
R iv e e tte r
ter
Pi n
Op
en
s p a - ja w
n n ed
er
in
W orkbench,
M easuring instrum ents,
Tools, M achinery, Vice
Ya
Cal rdstick
lipe
Mic r gaug
e
ro
Pr o m e t e r
t r ac
Ba
tor
M ck
a r sq
ki ua
n
B e g t re
T r v e l oo l
ac
er
Figure 10.16: Universal practice task channel section
T ools
M achinery
10.6. Conclusion
The idea of structuring vocational learning into courses strictly follows the work ethic of
modern industry: achieving optimal productivity with the lowest possible human,
organisational and technological investment. The Universal practice task, channel section
example shows the radical transfer of this concept to sequentialised vocational training
(Figure 10.16). The basic metalworking learning goals resistance, quality and construction
knowledge (time economy) are linked to the rigid demands of work discipline and
endurance (socioeconomy) by means of a single object (material economy), a channel section.
154
The socio-genesis of industrialisation has been portrayed and analysed historiographically in

fair detail: the Industrial Revolution in England, its transfer to France, Germany and the rest of
mainland Europe, and its subsequent leap to North and South America, Japan and, after the
Second World War, to numerous southern hemisphere countries. Natural as this development
may now seem, the various national training concepts for the masses of industrial workers
differ drastically, considering that they originate from the same technological trajectory
(Greinert, 1999).
However, this strict observation only applies to the system level of the vocational training
order. The lower, operational, direct training level, in contrast, has produced relatively
standardised, typically industrial learning concepts. The course, with its sequential learning
organisation, must be regarded as a prototype for this development. The birth of the training
course concept reflects both the modernisation history of industrial nations and the history of
European cultural exchange.
Undoubtedly, the training course is the most successful and effective learning system in the
short history of industrial vocational training. Its didactic concept has merited an
unprecedented dissemination across all European industrial societies. One does not need to be
a prophet to predict that we will continue to work with the sequentialisation as problem
reduction learning structure in the next 130 years. It is impossible to create a fundamental
repertoire for an area of specialisation faster and more reliably. Modern courses in hydraulics,
pneumatics, electronics, CNC technology and EDP demonstrate how crucial this learning
system is.
The dominance of the Russian System in vocational training is waning. Current production
conditions now demand open qualifications which are increasingly provided by teaching
learning in context (Figure 10.11) and self-guided problem-solving in projects and
Juniorfirmen (practice firms). These innovations are urgently needed, since the internal
structure of courses often engenders discipline (Kipp, 1995) with the aim of subordinating
apprentice interests to those of the state and the economy. The European legacy of vocational
education sequentialisation and consolidation still requires historical analysis of its
evolution and transfer. This is a task for Cedefop, too. For 130 years, millions of young people
have set out on their career paths with the laborious training-course apprenticeship and have
thus made a considerable contribution to the quality of European industrial products.
155
Notes
Vocational Training Act (BBiG): the regulations for vocational training in industry were
compiled jointly by the associations over a considerable period. These regulations were
codified in a federal law in 1969 after drawn-out political debate.
German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ): this organisation is a federal
government agency to promote international development policy. It has demonstrated
competence and commitment to vocational training since the Second World War. GTZ
experts have helped transfer the training course system to countries on the threshold of
industrial development. This proved that smooth transfer to different social, linguistic and
cultural conditions was possible.
Troika: this term denotes the cooperation of German and Russian universities in a planned
in-depth study on the transfer processes of the training course system in Europe more closely.
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Wiemann, G.; Ploghaus, G. Die Methode der kontinuierlichen Entwicklung von Fertigkeiten
in der beruflichen Bildung: Viktor Della-Vos, Begrnder der sequenziellen Methode zum
100. Todestag. In Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (ed.) Methodological problems of
general vocational preparation. Moscow: 1991 [in Russian].
157
11. Three hundred years of vocational education in

Russia
Irina Stanislawowna Derivianko
The 300th anniversary of vocational education in Russia fell on 14 January 2001, as it was on
14 January 1701 that the first school of mathematics and navigation was opened in Moscow
by decree of Peter the Great, the Russian tsar and reformer. Here is a very brief explanation of
the economic situation in Russia during this period.
The country was an agrarian state and the basis of the economy was agriculture, using peasant
manual labour. On succession to the throne, the 17-year old Peter I, who was to introduce
extensive reforms in Russia in the future, dreamed of an industrial power with a strong navy.
To realise the plans of the Russian Emperor, specialists such as engineers and workers were
required, but these were resources that Russia did not have. Turning his attention to the
Europe of the Enlightenment, Peter I and his Grand Embassy travelled abroad in 1697. His
principal aim was to find countries in Western Europe to be allies in the struggle against
Turkey, at the same time the Grand Embassy assembled academics and industrial experts to
work in Russia. Many of the members of the Grand Embassy underwent training in various
professions. Peter I himself studied navigation theory abroad as well as mathematics and
geometry, and also gained work experience as a carpenter in shipyards in Zaandam, previously
Saardam, where there is still a museum dedicated to the tsar and carpenter. The Russian
Emperor mastered 14 trades including ships, navigation, mathematics and astronomy and even
medicine.
After his travels and studies abroad, the Tsar returned to Russia in 1698 and began to reform
the Russian State. The foundations were laid for a system for training engineers and specialist
workers, the mining and metallurgical industry was launched in the country and the naval fleet
was built, which Russia used to expand and strengthen its sea borders.
Schools were opened which marked the start of vocational education, including schools of
navigation, artillery, engineering and medicine. In addition, schools concerned with training
highly qualified engineers, shipwrights and technicians, mining and metallurgical specialist
workers were also created.
A school for general education was opened in Moscow, headed by the well-known
Marienburg pastor of Saxon origin, Gluck, an enthusiastic pedagogue and missionary who had
received a good philological and theological education at German universities.
Peter I practically had to force the issue of education in Russia; there was virtually no one
interested in studying. Parents did not want to send their children to be educated; in fact they
took every possible means to prevent it. Discipline in newly-opened educational institutions
158
was very harsh. Fines were imposed for truancy and corporal punishment was used. Peter I
was forced to issue a decree to the effect that those not having a relevant certificate of
education were prohibited from marrying. This, in turn, had the consequence that unmarried
men did not have inheritance rights.
Of course, without the aid of his comrades-in-arms (aides), the Tsar and reformer would not
have been able to do what was necessary to enable Russia to be transformed over a very short
period of time from an agrarian country into an industrial state, one of the leading states in
Europe. The origin of a person, or his nationality, was of little significance to the Tsar. The
most important factors were the quality of his work and his desire to work for the good of the
fatherland. Peter Is closest comrades-in-arms should be mentioned here.
Aleksandr Menshikov, Feodan Prokopovich, Andrei Nartov, Demidovi were from the lowest
levels of society. The nobleman Vasilii Tatishchev, the Scotsman James Bruce, the Dutchman
Williams Genin and many other of the tsar's comrades-in-arms were reformers who left an
important mark in the history of the development of the Russian State and, in particular, in the
history of vocational education.
If, at the beginning of Peter Is reign, reforms were not precisely planned, by the 1720s
specific prospects for the development of Russia began to take shape. However, the sudden
death of the Tsar suspended the progress of development, including in the system of
vocational education, for a long time.
From 1762 reform progress continued, in particular in education. This occurred after the
overthrow of the reigning monarch and succession to the throne of Empress Catherine II,
formerly Sofia Frederika Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, a German by origin, who became known
as Yekaterina Alekseevna after she was baptised into the Orthodox Church.
In the first half of the 18th century, the system of schools for general education was not
widespread. Catherine II put the slogan man and citizen on the banners of education in place
of the motto craftsman, which was characteristic of the era of Peter the Great. Under
Catherine, the aim of newly established educational institutions was to provide a general
education. She set herself the task of creating a wealthy, lawful and educated country,
achieving a great deal both for Russia and for the history of the development of vocational
education. Under Catherine II, schools for the different social classes were opened in which
children studied according to their background. Graded education was introduced and
educational institutions continued to be opened for training specialist workers.
In the periods of educational development under Peter the Great and Catherine II, there was
radical reform in the very approach to vocational education with even the ruling class realising
that education was necessary for a State to flourish.
The problems of educating and training the Russian people fell to Catherine and her closest
aides. Among them was Ivan Betskoi, the illegitimate son of Prince Trubetskii, born in
Sweden. Until he was 20 he lived abroad and gained a brilliant education at universities in
159
bo and Leipzig and, on arriving in Russia, entered the circle of the Empress trusted
companions. Policy as regards education was put into practice by creating the Academy of
Arts, the Smolny Institute, nine educational orphanages, and by opening a number of specialist
primary institutions. There were also some unrealisable ideas: in particular, Catherine II and
her aides wanted to foster a new breed of people. This was a utopian idea mainly derived
from the fact that Betskoi thought that the imperfect society in which people lived prevented
them from developing into highly moral people and so it was necessary for children to be
educated in isolation from surrounding society. They created a specialist school where
children lived, were educated and learned a profession away from their parents, using methods
which supposedly assisted in fostering a new breed of people.
It is also necessary to say something of the first woman in Russia (apart from women
succeeding to the throne) to occupy a State post: Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. She said:
Education leads to liberty, liberty without education would give rise only to anarchy and
unrest. For a long time Dashkova lived abroad and had the reputation of being the most
educated woman of her time in the 18th century. Academics lauded her love for education.
Frederick the Great himself favoured her with conversation. Catherine II appointed her
director of the Academy of Sciences and Chairperson of the Russian Academy. This is how
her guest from Ireland, Catherine Wilmot, described her: [...] she teaches bricklayers how to
build walls, helps to make yeast, goes out to feed cows, writes music, writes articles for
publication, knows everything about theatre. She is a doctor, a pharmacist, a doctors
assistant, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a judge, a lawyer [...]. (The Russian journals ..., 1971)
In the 1870s and 1880s there was a technical revolution in the main branches of industry. The
countrys economy took a capitalist slant and the number of industrial workers increased. The
need for workers to have specialist training became more appreciable. All of these objective
processes brought about the need not only to increase the number of specialist educational
institutions, but also to create a system specifically for vocational education.
By the middle of the 19th century there was a rapid growth in industry in Russia. In 1866, the
Russian Technical Society was founded. The statutes of this society were approved by the
Emperor. The founders of the society had the intention of carrying out public lectures on
technical subjects, assisting in making technical education more widespread, in setting up
exhibitions at manufacturing and factory buildings, building technical libraries, chemical
laboratories and specialist museums.
One of the departments of this society was entirely responsible for managing primary
vocational education and assisted in opening specialist educational institutions for training
master craftsmen and workers in Russia. Yevgenii Andreev was the first chairman of this
society. In 1874, the society was awarded the honourable title of the Imperial society.
The Imperial Russian Technical Society developed the principles of specialist education; it
also created a number of awards for technical and vocational education and mobilised public
support for maintaining existing and opening new specialist educational institutions.
160
The vocational education institutions in pre-revolutionary Russia combined theoretical and

practical training in different ways. Secondary specialist educational institutions training
technical managers, production managers, specialists in these or other sectors of industry,
agriculture and transport at the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, offered
their graduates a very adequate theoretical training. The majority of the elementary vocational
educational institutions offered very limited theoretical training or did not give any at all,
being limited to only training in the trade for its students.
So it was from 1701, when Peter I opened the first vocational school, to 1917, that higher,
secondary and elementary vocational education was established in Russia. In November 1917,
the Bolsheviks came to power. Their slogans promised the world for ordinary people, but in
real life things turned out to be a lot more difficult. As in the famous Internationale there are
the words: [...] the earth shall rise on new foundations [...].
They really did destroy the old world. There were thousands of homeless children sleeping
rough in the cities; a civil war broke out. It was under these conditions that a new stage in the
development of Russia began. Vocational education was also destroyed. Before the
revolution, the majority of the educational institutions were private. In these new conditions,
the whole educational system was now subject to the Peoples Commissariat of Education and
the education system was nationalised. In the first years of Soviet rule, the leader of the
communist movement, V. I. Lenin personally prepared numerous decrees relating to
vocational education. Under the authority of the government, special committees were set up
to supervise issues relating to education and vocational and technical education. Numerous
decrees were issued, such as the Decree on General Educational Obligations. By 1917, the
country was more than 70 % illiterate and it is very difficult to learn a profession if you cannot
read or write, let alone have a higher level of education.
In 1921, Lenin was forced to use private capital in Russia. The New Economic Policy was
introduced, thanks to which work was begun on the refurbishment of factories and works and
on opening new ones. And so it was at these factories and works that schools were founded
for training specialist workers. These schools existed until the 1940s. They had the
disadvantage of there being no unified system for training specialist workers as each plant
trained specialists only for the purposes of their business.
In the 1930s, the country experienced rapid growth in industry and electrification and the
country began to industrialise. Gigantic constructions were developed. All this required vast
numbers of qualified workers. The government of the USSR (after 1936 Russia became
known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) found a way out of the situation that was
developing. In the 1930s, the Central Institute of Labour was founded in the Soviet Union, run
by enthusiast and lover of technology (he even dedicated poems to machines and mechanisms)
Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev. One of the first scheduled documents produced by the institute
were the rules How one should work. It is of interest here that these rules are still relevant to
work today.
161
By 1940 a problem had arisen which required an immediate solution, and this was to train
qualified specialist workers. In 1940 the Decree on State Labour Reserves was issued by the
government. In accordance with this decree, the government had the task of arranging the
organised training for qualified workers consisting of young people from cities and towns and
from the collective farms and of creating the necessary reserves of workers for industry.
Trainees were provided with free State accommodation, clothing, food and social and cultural
entertainment, entirely at State expense. Many prominent figures and well known personalities
completed their education at Labour Reserves institutions in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and
gained a vocational specialisation. For example, the first cosmonaut in the world,
Y. A. Gagarin, graduated from a vocational educational institution.
By 1941, the issue of workers had begun to be resolved in a favourable manner but, during
the Second World War, all institutions training specialist workers were placed on a war
footing. Education gained an especially practical approach: young men and women replaced
their fathers and their older comrades who had left for the front at their workbenches. After
the war, the country began the restoration of the destroyed cities, towns and villages and
again, workers were required as never before.
Thousands of primary vocational educational institutions were opened in the country, by
order of the Government. The period of study was one and a half to three years. A very
important decision was taken with regard to vocational education in 1968 when, in addition
to vocational education, those studying at vocational and technical institutions were also
given a full secondary education. Students completing their studies could go on and study
further in higher education institutions which had a positive effect on the replenishment of
the specialist workforce.
Separate mention should be made of the training system for workers in Leningrad.
Vocational education, managed by the talented organiser Lvov Alekseevich Gorchakov,
managed in a short period of time to solve the problem of training qualified workers for the
city and the north-west region of Russia. In Saint Petersburg (at that time Leningrad), and
later in other cities and towns in the Soviet Union as well, complexes were opened for
training specialist workers. Each complex included newly constructed buildings in which
the students lived, studied and relaxed, and these were all at the States expense. These
complexes were attached to core businesses. The businesses helped to educate the pupils.
Each business with more than 8 000 staff was obliged to help finance the building and
maintenance of the educational institution which would then train staff for the business.
Palaces of Youth were opened for the students where the boys and girls could play music,
dance and do ballet. Great importance was also attached to physical education for the
students. A sporting society, the Labour Reserves, was created which developed hundreds
of well known sportsmen.
In order to increase the prestige of specialist workers in the 1970s, the tutorship movement
was created. Many Heroes of Socialist Labour this was the highest award for civilian work
transferred to work as master craftsmen in educational institutions for training young workers.
162
It was by this means that in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the problem with workers was
resolved.
In the 1990s, Perestroika brought about change in Russia again. The balance which had been
attained through enormous effort was destroyed anew and the issue of training for specialist
workers became acute; yet again the country was faced with the issue of how best to solve this
problem.
Reference
The Russian journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot The Marchioness of Londonderry; H.
Montgomery Hyde (eds). New York: Arno Press, 1971.
163
12. Authors details

Dr Georg Hanf
Bundesinstitut fr Berufsbildung
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 38
D 53113 Bonn
Tel. (49-228) 107 16 02
Fax (49-228)107 29 63
E-mail: hanf@bibb.de
Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dietrich Greinert
Technische Universitt Berlin
Institut fr Berufliche Bildung und Arbeitslehre
Franklinstrasse 28/29
D-10587 Berlin
Tel. (49-30) 31 47 32 51
Fax (49-30) 31 42 11 17
E-mail: heike.hoehnel@tu-berlin.de
Prof. Dr Thomas Deissinger
Universitt Konstanz
Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Fach D 127
D-78457 Konstanz
Tel. (49-7531) 88 42 73
Fax (49-7531) 88 44 08
E-mail: thomas.deissinger@uni-konstanz.de
Dr Paul Ryan
University of Cambridge
Kings College
Faculty of Economics and Politics
Cambridge CB2 1ST
United Kingdom
Tel. (44-1223) 33 52 26 / 33 12 34
Fax (44-1223) 33 13 15
E-mail: Paul.Ryan@econ.cam.ac.uk
165
Vincent Troger
IUFM - Institut Universitaire de Formation des Matres
45 avenue des Etats-Unis RP815
F-78008 Versailles Cedex
Tel. (33) 139 24 20 47
E-mail: vtroger@noos.fr
Dr rer. pol. habil. Dietmar Frommberger
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt Jena
Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultt
Carl-Zeiss-Strasse 3
D-07743 Jena
Tel. (49-3641) 94 33 34
Fax (49-3641) 94 33 32
E-Mail: D.Frommberger@wiwi.uni-jena.de
Prof. Dr Holger Reinisch
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt Jena
Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultt
Carl-Zeiss-Strasse 3
D-07743 Jena
Tel. (49-3641) 94 33 30
Fax (49-3641) 94 33 32
E-mail: H.Reinisch@wiwi.uni-jena.de
Prof. Dr Philipp Gonon
Universitt Zrich
Hheres Lehramt Berufsschulen
Beckenhofstrasse 35
CH 8021 Zrich
Tel. (43) 305 66 14
E-mail: gonon@hlm.unizh.ch
Prof. Dr Anja Heikkinen
University of Jyvskyl
Department of Education
PO Box 35
FIN-40351 Jyvskyl
Tel. (358-14) 260 16 70
Fax (358-14) 260 16 61
E-mail: hoanhe@edu.jyu.fi
166
Dr Johannes Meyser
Technische Universitt Berlin
Institut fr Berufliche Bildung und Arbeitslehre
Franklinstr. 28/29
D-10587 Berlin
Tel. (49-30) 31 47 32 50
Fax (49-30) 31 42 11 17
E-mail: johannes.meyser@tu-berlin.de
Prof. Dr Gnter Wiemann
Am Hirtenberg 4
D-38104 Braunschweig
Tel. (49-531) 236 11 19
Fax (49-531) 236 11 25
Inna Stanislawowna Derevianko
Director
Museum for the History of Vocational Education and Training
Ul. Marata 64
191119 St Petersburg
Russia
Tel. (7-812) 315 03 72
Fax (7-812) 314 19 66
E-mail: iflspb@online.ru
167
List of abbreviations
AEU
Amalgamated Enginering Union
BBiG
Vocational Training Act
BIBB
CAP
Certificat dAptitude Professionnelle
CAYC
Clyde Apprentice and Youth Committee
Cedefop
European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
CSEU
EEF
Federated Scottish engineering firms
FEST
GTZ
German Society for Technical Cooperation
ITBs
Engineering training boards
MA
Modern Apprenticeship
NWETEA
North West Engineering Trades Employers Association
SEF
Shipbuilding Employers Federations
SME
Small and medium sized enterprises
VET
Vocational education and training
(the Engineering and the, respectively) and national trade unions and their federations (notably
the and the / respectively).
169
Cedefop (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training)

Towards a history of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe in a
comparative perspective: Proceedings of the first international conference
October 2002, Florence. Volume I. The rise of national VET systems
in a comparative perspective

2004 VI, 169 pp. 21 x 29.7 cm
(Cedefop Panorama series; 103 ISSN 1562-6180)
ISBN 92-896-0314-3
Cat. No: TI-13-04-001-EN-C
Free of charge 5153 EN
05
16
TI-13-04-001-EN-C
The contributions cover structural aspects such as the three main

types of VET system in Europe, the differences between
apprenticeship systems in England and in Germany, the
development of schools for technical and vocational education in
France, a comparison between VET in the Netherlands and in
Germany and the dynamics of VET in Switzerland. This volume
also features specific historical instances such as the
apprenticeship strikes in British metalworking, the production
school concept, Lehrgangsausbildung or the sequential method,
a systematic industry-based training method, the link between
continuing education and VET in Finland and the development of
VET in Russia.
04
This volume gathers the contributions of the first day of the First
international conference on the history of VET in Europe in a
comparative perspective, held in Florence 11-12 October 2002.
The overall theme of the conference was the different ways in
which European VET has developed over the years and how this
development is linked to various approaches to social policy.

Volume I

European Centre for the
Development of Vocational Training

Volume I
Europe 123, GR-570 01 Thessaloniki (Pylea)

Postal address: PO Box 22427, GR-551 02 Thessaloniki
Tel. (30) 23 10 49 01 11, Fax (30) 23 10 49 00 20
Free of charge On request from Cedefop
5153 EN
ISBN 92-896-0314-3
EN

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05

The contributions cover structural aspects such as the three main

Towards a history of vocational

Towards a history of vocational

Proceedings of the first international conference

Europe 123, GR-570 01 Thessaloniki (Pylea)

Free of charge On request from Cedefop

Towards a history of vocational education

Cedefop Panorama series; 103

Project team in Cedefop:

Published under the responsibility of:

Georg Hanf: Introduction .................................................................................................. 11

Wolf-Dietrich Greinert: European vocational training systems: the theoretical

What makes VET a system? ................................................................................ 17

Three work cultures................................................................................................ 19

Three vocational training regimes .......................................................................... 20

Three concepts legitimising three learning orientations......................................... 23

Thomas Deissinger: Apprenticeship systems in England and Germany: decline and

Structural differences between German and English apprenticeship ..................... 29

Liberalism and the tardy social State...................................................................... 34

Company vocational training at the dawn of the 20th century............................... 37

English further education schools at the dawn of the 20th century........................ 38

Paul Ryan: Apprentice strikes in British metalworking, 1919-69: attributes and

Context, attributes and strike demands .................................................................. 48

Strike demands .......................................................................................... 51

Economics of bargaining and training ...................................................... 52

Training attributes ..................................................................................... 54

Effects on and reactions of employers ...................................................... 55

Effects on pay structure............................................................................. 58

Annex: data sources .......................................................................................................... 60

Vincent Troger: Vocational training in French schools: the fragile State-employer

The devaluation of technical and vocational education ......................................... 70

Dietmar Frommberger, Holger Reinisch: Development of disparate structures

Historical development of VET in the Netherlands ............................................... 75

Historical development of VET in Germany.......................................................... 80

Philipp Gonon: The dynamics of vocational training innovation in Switzerland ............ 88

Vocational training as a system .............................................................................. 88

Educational reform through improvement ............................................................. 90

Vocational training as a subsystem of education ...................................... 89

Early vocational training in Switzerland ................................................................ 92

The third learning environment: the synthesis of learning and work........ 93

Working at school: Pestalozzi, Fellenberg and others .............................. 93

The workplace as school: Schppi, Bendel, etc. ....................................... 94

Pluralisation of vocational training ........................................................... 96

Continuing education in Finland .......................................................................... 102

Continuing education in Nordic countries and Germany ..................................... 105

Continuing education and models of VET ........................................................... 109

Political implications............................................................................................ 112

Annex 1........................................................................................................................... 115

Johannes Meyser: The production school concept as Europes first didactically

The production school concept and modernisation.............................................. 122

The coles dArts et Mtiers in France ................................................................ 123

Phase I (1780 to 1803): vanguard of vocational training according

Phase III (1815 to 1850): consolidation of the coles dArts et

A new European vocational training concept....................................................... 124

Contextual origins of the production school concept in France ........................... 125

Late development of French industrialisation......................................... 125

Deposition of the guilds .......................................................................... 126

Technical and scientific progress ............................................................ 126

The philanthropic movement .................................................................. 126

Personal influence of La Rochefoucauld ................................................ 127

Objectives and realisation of the production school concept in Europe

10. *QWHU:LHPDQQLehrgangsausbildung: a European prototype of a universal